Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis will speak at Vanderbilt University Jan. 14 about his new book God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe.
Lewis, the Julius Silver University Professor and professor of history at New York University, will speak in Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. His lecture is titled “A Counter-Narrative: Islam and the Making of the First Europe.”
The event will begin at 6 p.m., preceded by a reception at 5 p.m. in Ingram Hall. Both events are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required, but seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-seated basis. Parking will be available in South Garage at 24th Avenue South and Children’s Way.
Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and again in 2001 for his two-volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois. He is a specialist in 20th-century social history as well as in the creation of modern Africa through forces of colonialism and resistance.
The author of eight books and editor of two more, Lewis is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society and served as president of the Society of American Historians, 2002-03. He was an Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin during spring 2008.
A 1956 graduate of Fisk University, Lewis holds graduate history degrees from Columbia and the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1985 to 1994, he held the Martin Luther King Jr. Professorship in the Rutgers-New Brunswick history department, and from 1994-2003 was King University Professor.
A Web cast will be made available after the event at www.vanderbilt.edu/news and archived online afterwards.
Lewis’ speech is part of the Chancellor’s Lecture Series, which serves to bring to Vanderbilt and the wider Nashville community intellectuals who are shaping the world today. For more information about the Chancellor’s Lecture Series, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/chancellor/cls.
Media Contact: Missy Pankake, (615) 322-NEWS
missy.pankake@vanderbilt.edu