Tag: Pierre Birnbaum

Much of what we read about the modern university -- the endless faculty squabbles, the pitfalls of digital education, bored undergrads -- leave most of us with a giant headache.

But were we to look beyond the headlines and more squarely at the day to day business of the university, a decidedly more heartening portrait might emerge, one in which college education complicates and enlarges our sense of the world.

A case in point is the Frieda Kobernick Fleischman Lecture in Judaic Studies, which is presented annually by GW’s Program in Judaic Studies. A high point of the program’s calendar, this lecture brings to campus celebrated scholars of the Jewish experience to reflect on one or another of its varied manifestations.

This year’s Fleischman Lecture, which is scheduled to take place on Monday evening, April 15th, at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., features Professor Pierre Birnbaum, one of France’s leading political sociologists and historians. His talk, Sur la table: Food, Identity and the Jews in Modern France, casts a searching eye on the often surprising ways in which gastronomy has as much to do with citizenship as it does with the palate.

Making its way through a dazzling array of sources -- menus, official pronouncements, news clips, Jewish communal records, even song -- Professor Birnbaum’s presentation promises to enrich our understanding of what it means to be a citizen and, in the process, to reveal the university at its very best.