Leonard Barkan: Berlin for Jews

 
What is it like to travel to Berlin today, particularly as a Jew, and bring with you the baggage of history? And what happens when an American Jew, raised by a secular family, falls in love with Berlin not in spite of his being a Jew but because of it?  Leonard Barkan’s answer is Berlin for Jews.  Part history and part travel companion, Barkan’s book is personal love letter to the city that explores how its long Jewish heritage, despite the atrocities of the Nazi era, has left an inspiring imprint on the vibrant metropolis of today.
 
Discussion with Leonard Barkan, and reception following the presentation
 
Leonard Barkan is professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where he is also affiliated with the Departments of Art and Archaeology, Classics, and English. He has been a professor of English and of Art History at universities including Northwestern, Michigan, and N.Y.U. Among his books are The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism and Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture, which won awards from the Modern Language Association, the College Art Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and the PEN America Center. He is the winner of the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been an actor and a director; he is also a regular contributor to publications in both the U.S. and Italy, where he writes on the subject of food and wine. His other books include Satyr Square, which is an account of art, literature, food, wine, Italy, and himself, and Michelangelo:  A Life on Paper, in which he traces an inner biography of the artist via a close reading of his drawings and writings.  He is currently completing a volume entitled Reading for the Food:  Art, Literature, and the Hungry Eye.

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