LSE public lecture
Date: Wednesday 12 March 2008
Time: 6:30-8pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House
Speaker: Professor David Levering Lewis
Chair: Professor Janet Hartley
Professor Lewis will argue that the 732CE Battle of Poitiers and the 778CE debacle at Roncevaux are pivotal moments in the creation of an economically retarded, balkanised, and fratricidal Europe, which, by defining itself in opposition to Islam in al-Andalus, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.
This event marks the launch of Professor Lewis's new book God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe (W.W.Norton and Co, February 2008).
David Levering Lewis is professor of history at New York University and an LSE alumnus. Both volumes of his biography of WEB Du Bois received the Pulitzer Prize. He is the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, for Spring 2008. He is past president of the Society of American Historians. His work reflects the mutual dependence of African and African-American history, as well as the utility of biography in the exploration of American race, class, and politics. He is the recipient of fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Parkman Prize, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, his two volumes on the life of W.E.B. DuBois won the Pulitzer Prize, the only time in the history of the award that both volumes of a biography have won. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, his M.A. from Columbia University, and his B.A. from Fisk University.
This event is supported by the LSE Annual Fund.
Podcast
A podcast of this event is available to download from the LSE public lectures and events podcasts channel.