Barry Scott Wimpfheimer specializes in the Talmud and other Rabbinic Literature. His work focuses on the Babylonian Talmud as a work of law and literature. Part scripture and part commentary, it is written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic and is an unlikely bestseller. The Talmud has remained in print for centuries and is more popular today than ever. Barry Scott Wimpfheimer discusses his book, The Talmud, A Biography, which tells the remarkable story of this ancient book and explains why it has endured for almost two millennia. Series: "Taubman Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 35805]

Writers (Audio)

The Talmud as Icon

Similarities between Veep and The West Wing, the perils of drawing TV plot lines from real political events, and the connection between the speed metal genre and today’s news cycle all arise in this conversation between writer/executive producer David Mandel, writer Eli Attie, and Carsey-Wolf Director Patrice Petro about Veep and The West Wing. In this video, Attie and Mandel share their admiration for one another’s work, and discuss the changing television landscape. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 35771]

TV at The Pollock: West Wing and VEEP

The narrative engine of Hill Street Blues, lessons in brevity from writing for advertising, and structural differences between Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU arise in this conversation between executive producer/writer Dick Wolf and Carsey-Wolf Center director Patrice Petro. In this video, Wolf describes his first experiences in a TV writing room and the foundations of the record-breaking run of Law & Order: SVU. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 35772]

TV at the Pollock: Dick Wolf: Writing Television Past Present and Future

An internationally celebrated American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist, Walker’s work has been translated into more than two dozen languages, and her books have sold more than fifteen million copies. She wrote The Color Purple, for which she won the National Book Award for hardcover fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Walker’s collected work includes poetry, novels, short fiction, essays, critical essays, and children’s stories. She was the recipient of a Rosenthal Foundation award and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award for In Love and Trouble. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Show ID: 35143]

An Evening with Alice Walker - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2020

In her new book, Ecopiety, Sarah McFarland Taylor offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ecopiety evidences the important "work" taking place as mediated popular culture plays an integral role in framing contemporary American environmental moral and ethical sensibilities. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Show ID: 35620]

Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue

Pico Iyer was named “arguably the world’s greatest living travel writer,” by Outside, and is the author of over a dozen books and countless essays. The New Yorker called Iyer an “intellectual and spiritual adventurer.” Iyer explores these two intertwined spheres—the inner and the outer—in his writings and in three recent TED Talks, which have racked up some eight million views. Iyer is the author of two novels and ten works of nonfiction, including such perennial favorites as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, and The Global Soul. His best-selling 2008 book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was drawn from decades of talks and travels with the Tibetan leader. Iyer's newest book, Autumn Light, out in April 2019, is a far-reaching meditation on impermanence, mortality, and grief that draws extensively on his more than 30 years of living in Japan. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Show ID: 35142]

An Evening with Pico Iyer - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2020

Sonia Nazario is an award-winning journalist whose stories have tackled some of this country’s most intractable problems — hunger, drug addiction, immigration — and have won some of the most prestigious journalism and book awards. She is best known for "Enrique's Journey," her story of a Honduran boy’s struggle to find his mother in the U.S. Published as a series in the Los Angeles Times, "Enrique's Journey" won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2003. It was turned into a book by Random House and became a national bestseller. Her recent humanitarian efforts to get lawyers for unaccompanied migrant children led to her selection as the 2015 Don and Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award recipient by the Advocates for Human Rights. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Show ID: 35141]

An Evening with Sonia Nazario - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2020

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a writer and Clinical Psychologist from Tel Aviv University. In her talk, she delves into the world of her newest novel, The Liar. Written with propulsive energy, dark humor, and deep insight, The Liar reveals the far-reaching consequences of even our smallest choices, and explores the hidden corners of human nature to reveal the liar, and the truth-teller, in all of us. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Show ID: 35471]

The Liar with Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? Pamela Nadell, American University, talks about her book that looks at the history of Jewish women from colonial times to today. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Show ID: 35472]

America’s Jewish Women

As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past. In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. She combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Series: "Writers" [Show ID: 35015]

Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil with Susan Neiman - Holocaust Living History Workshop

In "Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press" Eddy Portnoy mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of Yiddish culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34806]

The Strange Stories of Yiddishland: What the Yiddish Press Reveals about the Jews

Rachel Kadish is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction, author of several novels and a novella. Her fiction work has won the National Jewish Book Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize, the John Gardner Fiction Prize, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award. She discusses her latest book, "The Weight of Ink," a work of historical fiction set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century. Series: "Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34680]

The Weight of Ink - Rachel Kadish

The former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman is both a poet and an essayist who teaches Literature and Religion at Yale Divinity School. In an interview he discussed what he hopes readers might take from his work: I have no illusions about adding to sophisticated theological thinking. But I think there are a ton of people out there who are what you might call unbelieving believers, people whose consciousness is completely modern and yet who have this strong spiritual hunger in them. I would like to say something helpful to those people. His most recent book is He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art, released in 2018. Other books include My Bright Abyss, Ambition and Survival, Every Riven Thing, Hammer is the Prayer, Hard Night, and The Long Home. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33947]

An Evening with Christian Wiman - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2019

E.J. Dionne writes about politics in a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post, and is a government professor at Georgetown University, a visiting professor at Harvard University, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He is a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio. Before joining The Post in 1990 as a political reporter, Dionne spent 14 years at The New York Times, where he covered politics and reported from Albany, Washington, Paris, Rome and Beirut. His coverage of the Vatican was described by the Los Angeles Times as the best in two decades. In 2014-2015, Dionne was the vice president of the American Political Science Association. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 33946]

An Evening with E.J. Dionne - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2019

More recently known for her Black Panther and Wakanda Forever Marvel Comics, Nnedi Okorafor is an international award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. Born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents, Nnedi is known for weaving African culture into creative evocative settings and memorable characters. In a profile of Nnedi’s work titled, “Weapons of Mass Creation,” The New York Times called Nnedi’s imagination “stunning.” Game of Thrones author, George R.R. Martin and HBO are currently developing a show based on her World Fantasy Award Winning novel, Who Fears Death. Ta-Nehisi Coates has passed the torch on writing the Black Panther comics to Nnedi, and the women warriors from the mega-hit movie were such fan favorites that Marvel has tasked Nnedi to create a new spinoff comic, Wakanda Forever. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33945]

An Evening with Nnedi Okorafor - Writer's Symposium by the Sea 2019

Writing can spark the imagination, take you to far away places, and even bring about social change. In this collection, writers speak about their craft and read from selected works.