Visiting lecturer to speak at URI
on personal identity in multi-national,
multi-language families
KINGSTON, R.I. — November 13, 2002 — A visiting scholar to the University of Rhode Island will explore the complexities of a personal sense of identity in families of multi-national, and multi-language background, as well as the sense of being a member of a minority in various majority cultures.
Joseph “Pepe” Schraibman, a distinguished scholar of Cuban and Latin American – Jewish culture at Washington University in St. Louis, will speak at URI’s Multicultural Center on Monday, Dec. 2 at 3:30 p.m. His talk is free and open to the public.
Schraibman was born in Cuba into a Central European Ashkenazi Jewish family whose first language was Yiddish, not Spanish. The family emigrated to the U. S. in the late 1940s. His rich family history has given Schraibman a complex sense of personal identity in which European/Latin American/ and United States cultures are interwoven.
Schraibman has written extensively about the Spanish novelist Benito Perez Galdos, one of late 19th century Spain’s most prolific authors. His recent work has focused on the role of women in maintaining clandestine Jewish culture during the times of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
The visit is sponsored by the Honors Division’s Visiting Scholar Program, the Spanish Section of the Department of Modern Languages, and URI Hillel.