News Release

Local angles: Asheville, Fairmont

Photo: To download a photo, see end of story.

CBS News correspondent first
in Jewish studies lecture series

CHAPEL HILL - Growing up in the Jewish community of Robeson County will be the topic of a documentary film screening and discussion on Sept. 12 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

CBS News correspondent and UNC alumnus Drew Levinson, who was raised in Fairmont, will lead the discussion. The program will be the first in the fall 2006 lecture series presented by UNC's Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.

Lectures will be free to the public at 7:30 p.m. in the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at 150 South Road.

The Sept. 12 screening and discussion are made possible by a grant from the Charles H. Revson Foundation in honor of Eli N. Evans, a 1958 UNC graduate, and co-sponsored by UNC's Center for the Study of the American South. Through the Jewish studies center's statewide Revson outreach program, Levinson also will speak at UNC-Asheville on Sept. 13.

Levinson, who earned an undergraduate degree in peace, war and defense at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1982, has been based in New York since October 2002. He explores the history of his Jewish community in "Lasting Impressions," the 47-minute documentary. The story reveals how the Jewish people of Robeson County existed as both insiders and outsiders among their Christian neighbors.

The Jewish studies center, based in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences, provides scholars and students with an understanding of Judaism and the historic Jewish experience. The center brings together faculty from academic departments including American studies, English, Germanic languages, history, religious studies and Slavic languages and literatures.

Besides Levinson, fall speakers will include:

• Sept. 26: "Gender, Antisemitism and Modern Jewish Identity." Dr. Paula Hyman, Lucy Moses Professor of Modern Jewish History at Yale University, will explore how Jewish men and women fashioned their identities at the turn of the 20th century, an era that challenged their most basic assumptions about the place of Jews in state and society.
  
  
• Oct. 16: "The (Harry) Golden Era of Civil Rights." The Sylvia and Irving Margolis Lectureship on the Jewish Experience in the American South. Dr. Stephen Whitfield, professor of American studies at Brandeis University, will discuss the colorful life of Harry Golden, a Charlotte journalist and transplanted liberal New Yorker who felt at home in North Carolina
  
  
• Oct. 25: "The Son of Man: A Jewish Life." Dr. Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture at the University of California, Berkeley, will discuss how the Son of Man figure in the Gospels may provide important clues for unlocking the mysteries of rabbinic and non-rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.
  
  
• Nov. 16: "Midrash as Visualization: Depicting the Binding of Isaac in Text and Image." Dr. Marc Bregman, Herman and Zelda Bernard Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, explores how Jewish biblical interpretation invites its readers to visualize the narratives of the Bible.

The lectures are co-sponsored by a variety of campus units, including the Center for the Study of the American South and the religious studies department. For more information, visit http://ccjs.unc.edu or call (919) 962-1509.

- 30 -

Photo: For a photo of Levinson, visit: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/alum/levinson_drew.jpg

Carolina Center for Jewish Studies contact: Amy Strong, (919) 962-1509, alstrong@email.unc.edu
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Dee Reid, (919) 843-6339, deereid@unc.edu