"Now Avenge Us": Jewish Martyrdom and the First Crusade

press release: William Chester Jordan (Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University) will present the Hilldale Lecture in the Humanities on the topic, "'Now Avenge Us':  Jewish Martyrdom and the First Crusade" on Thursday October 3 at 6:00 PM in the Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Room L140. A reception is open to the general public prior to the lecture in the University Club, from 4:45-5:45 PM.

The lecture sketches out the background to the call for the First Crusade, narrates a few of the major events as context for the main story of the lecture, and then concentrates on what has been and can be learned from the Hebrew and Latin sources for the Jews’ responses. It concludes by raising the question of the appropriateness of the language of trauma to categorize the European phase of the crusade and its impact on the continent’s Jews.

On Friday, October 4, William Chester Jordan will also lead a workshop discussion for graduate students and faculty on "Confrontation and Dialogue: Issues of Race and Racism in Medieval Studies" at 11:00 AM in the Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, Hagen Room (150). To register for the workshop, please contact Prof. Thomas Dale, Director of Medieval Studies at tedale@wisc.edu.

This lecture is supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Hilldale Lecture Series and sponsored by the Arts & Humanities Divisional Committee.