Scholar Offers Insight into Dead Sea Scrolls

CHESTERTOWN, MD—One of the foremost experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence Schiffman, will lecture on the topic at Washington College on Monday, October 22. His presentation,  “Scholars, Scrolls and Scandals: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Judaism and Christianity,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Litrenta Lecture Hall of the John S. Toll Science Center on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

            The talk is sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and the Institute for Religion, Politics & Culture and is free and open to the public.

            Schiffman, who serves as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Yeshiva University, is a specialist in Judaism in Late Antiquity, the history of Jewish law, and Talmudic literature. He has published widely, including numerous scholarly articles on the history and significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the 1995 book Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls. His expertise has landed him in the PBS Nova documentary “Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” as well as in four BBC documentaries, the McNeil-Lehrer Report, and a Discovery special. He also consulted on the recent Franklin Institute exhibit, “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times,” in Philadelphia.

             Schiffman is a fellow with the American Academy for Jewish Research, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation. His most recent books include The Courtyards of the House of the Lord:  Studies on the Temple Scroll (2008)  and Qumran and Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism ( 2010). 

Leading Historian Beeman Invites Audiences to "Meet the Founders," Beginning October 24

CHESTERTOWN, MD—We often think of America’s Founders as a committee of like-minded sages who sat down together and methodically crafted the new nation. Richard Beeman, one of America’s leading historians of the Revolutionary era, will shatter that familiar notion in “Meet the Founders,” a series of three public talks debuting at Washington College on Wednesday, October 24.

It is hard to imagine personalities more different than the voluble – indeed, nearly manic-depressive – John Adams; the angry, pugnacious recent English immigrant Tom Paine; and the quiet, but deeply intellectual Thomas Jefferson. In his October 24 talk, Beeman will delve into the lives and characters of each of these men as they came together in common cause during the months leading up to the colonies’ independence. Later talks will focus on James Madison and Patrick Henry (November 7) and George Washington (November 14).

All three events will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, and will be followed by book signings. They are hosted by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, where Beeman is a senior fellow.

Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has been a member of that university’s faculty for 44 years and has served as Chair of the Department of History and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He was the winner of the 2010 George Washington Book Prize, one of the largest literary prizes in the nation, for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House). The New York Times called the book a “scholarly yet lively account” of the “passion-filled crucible” that was the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

“There will be two general themes at work in these lectures,” Beeman said. “The first is that the founding of an independent, united, American nation was not only not inevitable, but improbable – indeed, in some senses, audacious. The second is that the individuals instrumental in the American founding were a diverse bunch, different in cultural backgrounds, personalities, and political ideologies.”

Beeman is the author of seven books on Revolutionary-era America, including The Penguin Guide to the American Constitution (Penguin, 2010) and Patrick Henry: A Biography (McGraw-Hill, 1974), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Other honors have included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Huntington Library. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in the United Kingdom and as Harmsworth Distinguished Professor of American History at Oxford University. He has written articles and book reviews for many publications and has appeared with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

“Meet the Founders” serves as a sequel to “Inventing a Nation,” a series of four talks that Beeman offered at Washington College in the fall of 2011. That series was cosponsored by the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture, where Beeman is also a senior fellow.  “Dr. Beeman’s series last year was a smash hit, and we’re thrilled to have him return,” said Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. “There are few historians as gifted as he is at bringing to life the vivid personalities who played starring roles in the Revolutionary drama.”

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Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

WC Alum and Scholar to Share Story Of Correspondence Among Separated Austrian Jews

Dr. Jacqueline Vansant.

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Sometime between March and August of 1938, a small group of 15- and 16-year-old Jewish schoolboys stood on a bridge in Vienna and said goodbye to each other “forever.” Their families were about to flee Austria to avoid the increasing Nazi persecution. But pledging to stay in touch, the boys first devised a complicated plan for a group correspondence or “round robin.”

On Tuesday, October 23, Washington College alumna  Jacqueline Vansant ’76, a professor of German studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, will share the story of the remarkable correspondence the young men maintained for more than 15 years across three continents.  Her presentation, “Making Connections over Space and Time: The Extraordinary Group Correspondence of Jewish-Austrian Schoolboys,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in the Washington College Hillel House, 313 Washington Avenue. It is free and open to the public.

Vansant says she was first drawn to exile studies as a student of Washington College professor of German Erika Salloch, who had fled Nazi Germany. She has long focused her research on post-war Austrian literature and culture and in 2001 published Reclaiming ‘Heimat’: Trauma and Mourning in Memoirs of Jewish-Austrian Reemigres.

When Vansant heard about the correspondence among the nine Viennese schoolboys, she saw an opportunity to study how the experiences of the youth compared with those of the adult Jews who escaped Austria. “I was also fascinated by the thought of looking at texts that were contemporaneous with the historical events described in them,” she adds. “The letters indeed are amazing!”

 John Kautsky.

Vansant has worked closely with one of the original correspondents, John Kautsky, now a professor emeritus of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. She also met the son of correspondent Ali Hector, who emigrated to Erez Israel, and learned more about Ali’s life after the correspondence ended.

“My conversations with John Kautsky have given me a fuller understanding of just how important the correspondence was for the young men,” says Vansant. “John remained friends with some of the correspondents until their recent deaths. His wife, Lilli, has also shared her experiences of flight from Austria, which bring home how many stories are out there to be told.”

The Oct. 23 talk is sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages; the Institute for the Study of Religion, Politics, and Culture; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Hillel House.  For more information, contact Nicole Grewling at (800) 422-1782, ext. 5763, or by email, ngrewling2@washcoll.edu.

Visiting Scholar from Indonesia to Explain Rise of Religious Radicals After Suharto

CHESTERTOWN, MD—A scholar from Indonesia will visit Washington College on Tuesday, September 25 to talk about the rise of religious radicalism in her country.

Poppy S. Winanti, a lecturer in International Relations at the Universitas Gadjah Mada, will explain how progress toward a democratic political system following the fall of President Suharto in 1998 has unleashed both positive outcomes—such as press freedom, free elections and a multi-party system—and negative ones that lead to religious violence and intolerance.

The talk, “Religious Radicalism in the Post-Suharto Era in Indonesia,” will take place at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.  Sponsored by the Program in Islamic, Turkish and Near Eastern Studies of the Institute for Religion Politics and Culture, the event is free and open to the public.

Poppy Sulistyaning Winanti is currently researching Indonesia’s failure to properly manage religious diversity. She co-authored The Post-Military Society: the Challenges and Opportunities in Demilitarization of Indonesia.