Biographies of Conference Speakers
Speakers:
Joel Kraemer
Joel Kraemer is John Henry Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School
and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He has written
on the transmission of the intellectual heritage of Greek antiquity to the world
of Islamicate civilization, in Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam and Philosophy
in the Renaissance of Islam. His more recent interests concern the interplay
of cultural and religious themes within Islam and Judaism. He is currently engaged
in research on Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts in the documentary portion of the Cairo
Geniza. He has been investigating Maimonides’ life and works in their Islamic
context, and has edited Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical
Studies. Professor Kraemer is also preparing a collection of Maimonides’
letters for a volume in the Yale Judaica Series and a volume of women’s letters
from the Cairo Geniza.
Sherwin P. Nuland
Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, FACS is Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Yale School
of Medicine. He serves on the executive committees of Yale's Whitney Humanities
Center and its Interdisciplinary Bioethics Forum. After contributing to the
literature of clinical research, surgery and medical history, Dr. Nuland wrote
his first book for the general reader, Doctors: The Biography of Medicine
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), the story of medicine told in the form of biographies
of 14 of its most prominent contributors. Since then, he has written for The
New Yorker, Time Life, National Geographic, Discover, The New Republic, the
New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles
Times, Newsweek, and several other periodicals. In 1994, Dr. Nuland published
How We Die, (Alfred A. Knopf), which was on the New York Times best-seller
list for 34 weeks and was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Other books
written by him include How We Live (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), Leonardo
Da Vinci (Lipper/Viking, 2002) and most recently Lost in America:
A Journey with My Father (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). He is currently
working on a biography of Moses Maimonides which will be published next winter.
Daniel Lasker
Daniel J. Lasker is Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values at Ben-Gurion
University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, where he teaches medieval Jewish philosophy
in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought. Prof. Lasker holds three
degrees from Brandeis University and also studied at the Hebrew University,
Jerusalem. In 2004-2005, he will be the Horace W. Goldsmith Visiting Professor
at Yale (a position he held in 1997 as well). In addition, he has taught at
Princeton, University of Toronto, Ohio State University, University of Texas,
University of Washington, and other institutions of higher learning in the United
States. In Spring, 2005, Prof. Lasker will also be the Dean Ernest Schwarcz
Eminent Visiting Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Queens College of the City
University of New York. Professor Lasker is the author of four books and over
a hundred fifty other publications in the fields of Jewish philosophy and theology,
the Jewish-Christian debate, Karaism, the Jewish calendar, and Judaism and modern
medicine. He has lectured widely at universities and synagogues throughout North
America, as well as at professional conferences on five continents. He is a
member of a number of professional organizations, including the Society for
Judaeo-Arabic Studies, of which he is a board member
Menachem Kellner
Menachem Kellner, the Sir Isaac and Lady Edith Wolfson Professor of Jewish Religious
Thought at the University of Haifa. Kellner has also taught philosophy at Washington
University, religious studies at the College of William and Mary and at the
University of Virginia and medieval and modern Jewish philosophy at the University
of Haifa. He has also served as Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne and at Northwestern
University. In addition to his teaching and research responsiblities in Haifa
University's Department of Jewish History and Thought, Menachem Kellner has
served as Chair of the University's Department of Maritime Civilizations, a
unique inter-disciplinary graduate program in maritime archeology and history
(1988-91), and as Dean of Students (1994-97). A prolific author, his publications
include: Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford 1986; Hebrew translation
Jerusalem, 1991), Maimonides on Human Perfection (Atlanta, 1990), Maimonides
on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany,1992). He was also editor of Human
Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Pespectives (with Charles
Manekin; College Park, 1997), and of Gersonides' Commentary on Song of Songs
(New Haven, 1998). He is currently preparing a translation of Maimonides'
Book of Love for the Yale Judaica Series.
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Yale University Library, Judaica Collection
Maimonides, a conference at Yale University
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