Israeli novelist and short-story writer Amos Oz will deliver the Tanner Lecture on Human Values, titled “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict—Tragedy, Comedy and Cognitive Block: A Storyteller’s Point of View,” at 4 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 12) in Rackham Auditorium.
A panel of three influential scholars will respond to Oz’s lecture in a symposium at 1:30 p.m. Friday (Nov. 13) in Rackham Amphitheater. Both the Tanner Lecture and the symposium are free and open to the public.
Oz is an award-winning author and a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel. His often controversial books challenge simplistic views of Zionism, Israeli society and Israeli culture. Oz is the author of eight novels, three short-story collections and three books of essays. Originally written in Hebrew, his work has been translated into 26 languages.
In 1988, Oz won the Prix Femina Etranger, France’s top literary award, and England’s Wingate Prize for his novel, Black Box. Other major books include My Michael (1972), and Where the Jackals Howl (1981).
Since 1987, Oz has been active with several groups struggling for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He is a leader in the Israeli “Peace Now” movement.
Participants in the Nov. 13 symposium are Rashid Khalidi, associate professor of modern Middle Eastern history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago; Anton Shammas, adjunct professor of Near Eastern studies at the U-M; and Bernard Yack, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
The Tanner Lecture on Human Values is funded by a grant from Obert C. Tanner and is established at six universities in the United States and in England: the U-M, Utah, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge.
Previous U-M Tanner lecturers have included novelist Toni Morrison and political economist and historian Albert O. Hirschman.
