Event

You are invited to attend the 34th Annual Joseph Alexander Colloquium with Ilan Stavans, Lewis Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Culture, at Amherst College, lecturing on his book The Seventh Heaven: Travels through Jewish Latin America.

An internationally-renown essayist, translator, editor, and cultural commentator, Ilan Stavans spent the last four years traversing Latin America in search of manifestations of Jewish life. From the “Indian Jews” in the Amazon to the “secret Jews” of northern Mexico, from the agricultural communities in La Pampa to neo-Nazi activities in Patagonia, Stavans comes across a wide range of circumstances that are at once distressing and hopeful.

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin America and Latino Culture at Amherst College, publisher of Restless Books, and host of the NPR podcast “In Contrast.” He is the author of many books, including Spanglish (2003), Gabriel García Marquez: The Early Years (2010), Singer’s Typewriter and Mine (2013), Quixote: The Novel and the World (2015), and, most recently, The Seventh Heaven: Travels through Jewish Latin America (2019). He writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. His award-winning work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into radio, TV, film, and theater.

Sponsored by the Joseph Alexander Foundation and the Mackler Family, cosponsored by the Jewish Studies Program, Comparative Literature, Romance Languages, and Hispanic Studies