Dartmouth Events

"Meditations on Wickedness from South India and South Hebron."

David Shulman, Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Thursday, May 4, 2017
4:30pm – 5:45pm
Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Lectures & Seminars

Abstract: "'Evil' may be an abstraction, and the problem of evil, while universal, often tends in European discourse toward the metaphysical. "Wickedness," however, carries an intimation of the personal, the intentional, and the concrete. This lecture seeks to examine wickedness first on the basis of a sixteenth-century South Indian text about a man, Nigama Sharma, who is seen as the epitome of the wicked, and then in the light of personal experiences over many years in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. We might arrive at a formulation of everyday wickedness-- not blatant sadistic cruelty but something far more prevalent and consequential-- as a subtle choice that in most cases could easily have taken another course."

David Shulman, the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, is an Indologist and is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the languages of India. He is the winner of the Israel Prize for 2016 and a MacArthur Fellowship ("Genius Grant"), and is also a published poet in Hebrew, literary critic, and cultural anthropologist. Among the more than 20 books he has authored or co-authored are: The King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (1985), The Wisdom of the Poets (2001), Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (2007), More Than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India (2012), and Tamil: A Biography (2016).

The James & David Orr Memorial Lecture on Culture & Religion at Dartmouth.

Free and open to all. Reception follows.

For more information, contact:
Marcia Welsh
(603) 646-3738

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.