David S. Lobel Visiting Scholar Lecture: "Rock Solid: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments" with Jenna Weissman-Joselit

David S. Lobel Visiting Scholar Lecture

Jenna Weissman-Joselit, Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History, The George Washington University"Rock Solid: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments"

A leading historian traces the history of the Ten Commandments in American Culture. In her illustrated talk, Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit explores the variety of ways by which Americans of the 19th and 20th centuries laid claim to and organized their national identity around the Decalogue. Drawing on a wide array of sources that run the gamut from sermons to Moses action figures and from archeological objects found in Indian burial mounds to latter-day monuments planted in the nation's civic squares, her presentation highlights the centrality of these ancient do's and dont's to the American imagination.