University News

The 36th Annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture Sept. 21

August 22, 2023

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MACOMB, IL - - University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Vilas Research Steven Nadler will deliver the 36th annual Mary Olive Woods Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21 in the University Union Grand Ballroom. A reception will follow the lecture and is free and open to the public.

As the director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nadler is a renowned scholar in the fields of philosophy in the 17th century and medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy. His upcoming lecture is titled "Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated?"

Nadler's impressive academic background includes a doctorate degree from Columbia University and the authorship of several books. Among his notable works are "Spinoza: A Life" (winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for Biography), "A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise" and "The Birth of the Secular Age, and Rembrandt's Jews" (a Pulitzer Prize finalist). His latest publications include "The Portraitist: Frans Hals" and "His World and Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy," as well as the graphic book, "Heretics!: The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy," which he co-authored with his son, Ben Nadler.

An additional conversation with Nadler about his research will be held from 9:30-11:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 22 in Morgan Hall, room 453. Those interested in joining in a reading group of Nadler's work on Friday afternoon before his visit can email WIU Professor Brian Powell at bk-powell@wiu.edu.

The Mary Olive Woods Lecture is sponsored by the Department of Race, Religion, Gender, and Multidisciplinary Studies, Mathematics and Philosophy, and the Mary Olive Woods Foundation.

Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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