Distinguished Professor Jonathan Boyarin from UNC Chapel Hill will deliver the UNC Charlotte 16th annual Alice Tate Lecture in Judaic Studies on Monday, March 12, 2012.  The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Sam Lerner Center for Cultural Arts at Shalom Park, 5007 Providence Road in Charlotte.

Boyarin will speak about his new book, Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side, just published with Fordham University Press. The cultural importance of the Lower East Side to both Jewish life in America and American culture more widely is legendary. Boyarin’s book is already receiving rave reviews.

“This beautiful new book confirms Jonathan Boyarin's status as one of the most innovative scholars in Jewish Studies. Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul is a field journal and monument to religious endurance. But, first and foremost, it is a celebration of the pleasures of Jewish life.”—Matti Bunzl, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

“In a journal that is always humane, and often humorous, Jonathan Boyarin lovingly details one summer in the life of the Stanton Street Synagogue. Boyarin is the perfect tour guide to take us inside the ever-changing Jewish world on the Lower East Side--a place ‘where hip meets hip replacement.’”—Mort Zachter, Author of Dough: A Memoir.

Boyarin is the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at UNC-Chapel Hill. He holds the J.D. from Yale Law School as well as a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of a dozen books and has edited volumes ranging from ethnographic studies of Jewish life in Europe and the United States to studies of Zionism and Messianism. Boyarin has been called a fascinating and engaging lecturer who brings his passion and love of his subject to his audiences.

Boyarin will take questions after his lecture and will sign copies of his new book. The lecture is offered without charge and is open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.

The Alice Tate Lectures in Judaic Studies are held annually, made possible by the generous endowment of the late Alice Lindsay Tate of New York, who also endowed the Isaac Swift Distinguished Professorship in Judaic Studies at UNC Charlotte.  This lecture is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte and the Alice Tate Lectureship Fund in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, in cooperation with the departments of Religious Studies and Global, International and Area Studies.