Tuesday, March 11 at 6:30 PM, The Red Shoes

"There is Something Missing: Stories of Southern Jewish Women." Reading by Dr. Cindy Levy, Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature at Southern University. Dr. Levy will read from her collective memoir on Southern Jewish women. She interviewed Jewish women throughout the region and discovered stories of many individuals, one of which she will share. The event is co-sponsored by Hadassah of Baton Rouge and is free and open to the public.

Tuesday, March 25 at 6:30 PM, Place TBA

Jews in Spain and in Brooklyn, New York." Lecture by Dr. Joseph Ricapito, Yenni Distinguished Professor and Section Head for Italian and Spanish Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, LSU. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Thursday, March 27 at 4:30 pm, LSU—place TBA

"Intermarriage and Jewish Acculturation: Contemporary American Issues in Historical Perspective." Lecture by Dr. David Biale, Professor of History at University of California, Davis. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, April 2—time and place TBA

Reading by poet and writer Hettie Jones. Jones is the author of How I Became Hettie Jones (1990), a memoir of the beat scene of the fifties and sixties, as well as of her marriage (1958-1966) to LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. She is also the author of Big Star Fallin' Mama: Five Women in Black Music (1974) and several books for children. Her fiction, poems, and prose have appeared in Essence, Frontier: A Journal of Women Studies, Hanging Loose, Heresies, IKON, Ploughshares, Village Voice Literary Supplement, the Washington Post, and other periodicals. The Reading is co-sponsored by LSU’s programs in Women’s and Gender Studies, Creative Writing, and Jewish Studies. It is free and open to the public.

Monday, April 7 at 6:30, place TBA

"Enemies Abroad, Friends in the Unites States: French and German Jewish Diasporas along the Mississippi River in the 19th century." Lecture by Dr. Anny Bloch, Sociologist and Member of the French National Center for Scientific Research. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Saturday, April 12 from 10am-3pm, at the Red Shoes

DREAMS AND THE CREATIVE SOUL: Dream Study and Workshop with Rodger Kamenetz, author of The History of Last Night's Dream

International bestselling author Rodger Kamenetz believes it is not too late to reclaim the lost power of our nightly visions. The culmination of decades of research, The History of Last Night's Dream is a riveting intellectual and cultural investigation of dreams and what they have to teach us. Kamenetz will share stories of his mentors: an eighty-seven-year-old female Kabbalist in Jerusalem, a suave Tibetan Buddhist dream teacher in Copenhagen, and a crusty intuitive postman-turned-dream master in northern Vermont. Bring your dream journal, if you keep one, and enjoy interactive discussion and reflection. Books will be available for sale and Kamenetz will be signing books before and after this workshop.

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of the international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus and the Award-winning Stalking Elijah. He is a Professor in the Departments of English, Philosophy and Religious Studies at L.S.U. and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing and the Jewish Studies Program. Rodger Kamenetz is a certified dream therapist.

Register early—limited seating! For more information see http://www.TheRedShoes.org.

April 28 @ LSU—Time and place TBA

Screening and Discussion of Golda’s Balcony by Jeremy Kagan, international award winning director of The Chosen. The film is a "hybrid picture" transformation of William Gibson’s hit Broadway Play of the same name. Mr. Kagan has served as a lecturer for the Phi Beta Kappa Society, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and The Directors Guild where he is on the national board. He teaches at USC, UCLA and the American Film Institute; and serves as an artistic director at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. For more about the film, visit http://www.GoldasBalconyTheFilm.com/ . The event is free and open to the public.

Previous Events Sept-Nov 2007

Tuesday, Sept. 11 - Friday, September 14 at 7:30 PM; Sept. 16 at 2 PM, Hatcher Hall Theatre, LSU
Kindertransport, a play by Diane Samuels about a Jewish child evacuated from Nazi Germany to safety in England, inspired by the real-life evacuation of 10,000 Jewish children from pre-war Nazi Germany. $6 donation.

Tuesday, Sept. 18 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Discussion Series with Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Work Discussed: A Contract With God: and Other Testament Stories
by Will Eisner
For more about the series see: http://www.nextbook.org/ala/librl_marvels.html

Tuesday, September 25 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Lecture by Award-winning comic book artist and graphic novelist James Sturm:
"James Sturm's America: Cartooning on the Frontier"
Sturm's 2001 graphic novel The Golem's Mighty Swing uses the story of a barnstorming Jewish baseball team in the 1920s to consider issues such as religion, race, and the American dream. A collection of his early work, James Sturm's America: God, Gold, and Golems, will be released on August 21st. The Lecture and Exhibition, "Super Stories," are open to the Public. For more information see the Special Collections website: http://specialcollectionslsu.blogspot.com/2007/08/comic-book-artist-to-give-lecture-at.html

Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Discussion Series with Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Work Discussed: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
by Art Spiegelman

Sunday, Oct 7, at 5:00 PM, Music School Auditorium, LSU
Readers and Writers Presents: Poets Joseph Lease, David Shapiro, and Chancelier "xero" Skidmore.
Joseph Lease is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Broken World and Human Rights. Lease is Associate Professor of Writing and Literature and Chair of the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
David Shapiro received degrees from Columbia and Cambridge Universities and is now a tenured art historian at William Paterson University. He has written over twenty volumes of poetry and prose, and he is working on a collection of selected essays, as well as a new book of poetry. For Rodger Kamenetz's review of Shapiro's Collected Poems, see the following Website: http://www.forward.com/articles/11169/
Chancelier "xero" Skidmore lives in Baton Rouge and has represented it on several national poetry slam teams. Chancelier has ranked in the top 4 in individual national competition twice (2002 and 2005) He teaches poetry full-time through The WordPlay Teen Writing Project, and hosts the teen open mic, Freshhhh Heat, which attracts over 200 young people to every show. His poem "Blue Monday," was selected for the new edition of Spoken Word Revolution Redux. Chancelier has one CD, Unprohibited Narrative Hallucinations, and a chapbook, Crawling: I'm Perfect = Imperfect.
Readings are Free and Open to the Public:
http://www.english.lsu.edu/dept/orgs/readerswriters/speakers.html

Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Discussion Series with Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Work Discussed: Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories
by Ben Katchor
(Introduction by Michael Chabon)

Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Discussion Series with Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Work Discussed: The Quitter
by Harvey Pekar
(art by Dean Haspiel)

Friday November 2, from 9 AM-12 noon, Louisiana State Museum
"Wordshop": Rodger Kamenetz leads a Writing Workshop: LastNight's Dream: A Living Source for Writers. For more information see thewebsite below: http://www.louisianabookfestival.org/lbf2007/WordShops/Kamenetz.htm

Saturday, Nov 3, from 10 AM-5 PM, Louisiana State Capitol
Louisiana Book Festival: Rodger Kamenetz Reads from his new book: The History of Last Night's Dream at the...
Rodger Kamenetz is the author of the landmark international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus and the National Jewish Book Award-winning Stalking Elijah. His five books of poetry include The Lowercase Jew --he has been called "the most formidable of the Jewish-American poets". His memoir, Terra Infirma, has been described as "the most beautiful book ever written about a mother and son."

Tuesday, Nov. 6 at 6:00 PM, Hill Memorial Library, LSU
Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Discussion Series with Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman
Work Discussed: The Rabbi's Cat
by Joann Sfar

Sunday, Nov 11 at 5:00, Music School Auditorium, LSU
Readers and Writers Presents: Rodger Kamenetz and Laura Mullen.
Rodger Kamenetz will be discussing his new book, The History of Last Night's Dream. Laura Mullen is on the faculty at Louisiana State University and is the author of five books: The Surface; After I Was Dead; The Tales of Horror; Subject, and Murmur, as well as a chapbook, Turn. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Prize, and several MacDowell Colony Fellowships. Her poetry has been widely anthologized and her prose has appeared in Civil Disobediences: Poetics & Politics in Action, Paraspheres, and elsewhere.
Readings are Free and Open to the Public.