Purchase your ticket for the 2022 McDermott Lectureship.
*Early bird pricing is available through Feb. 28.
Professor of the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley
Alter, who has taught at Berkeley since 1967, will deliver an address on the topic , “The Challenge of Translating the Bible,” on Monday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. in the Irving Arts Center’s Carpenter Hall.
Alter’s completed translation of the Hebrew Bible with commentary was published in 2018 in a three-volume set. In 2019, he published The Art of Bible Translation, adding to his other publications over the past three decades, which have included Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem (1991), Imagined Cities (2005), Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (2010), and Nabokov and the Real World (2021). Alter has published 28 books in all, including two prize-winning volumes on biblical narrative and poetry and award-winning translations of Genesis and the Five Books of Moses. He has written extensively on the literary aspects of the Bible.
In 1974, the university established the Eugene McDermott Lectureship, an endowed lecture series created in honor of Eugene McDermott, the late scientist, businessman, civic leader, and philanthropist. It was established on behalf of Mrs. and Mr. Eugene McDermott in 1974 to honor Donald and Louise Cowan's vision and leadership at the University of Dallas and the city. Beginning with the venerable historian Jacques Barzun, the McDermott Lectureship continues to bring notable public intellectuals to the University for short courses and seminars.
1974 | Jacques Barzun |
1975 | Herbert Marshall McLuhan |
1976 | Hans Georg Gadamer |
1977 | Malcolm Muggeridge |
1978 | Christian Norberg-Schulz & Edmund Bacon |
1979 | Mortimer Adler |
1980 | Erich Heller |
1981 | Paul Ricoeur |
1982 | J. Carter Brown |
1983 | Paul Weiss & Stanley I. Jaki |
1984 | Seymour Slive & Harvey C. Manfield, Jr. |
1985 | Steven Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstader, Stephen Toulmin, Steven Weinberg |
1986 | Walter Ong, S.J., Horton Foote, Donald W. Seldin, Frank E. Vandiver |
1987 | Errol E. Harris |
1988 | Allan Bloom, Donald A. Cowan, Louise S. Cowan, Paul Johnson |
1989 | David Tracy & Yehudi Menuhin |
1990 | Cedric Messina |
1991 | Stanley H. Rosen & Weiming Lu |
1992 | Eva T.H. Brann |
1993 | Leon Kass & Oliver Bernier |
1994 | Rene Girard |
1995 | Robert Sokolowski & Paul Goldberger |
1997 | Derek Wolcott |
1998 | Nigel Wood |
1999 | Francis Cardinal Arinze |
2000 | Francis Fukuyama |
2001 | Donald Kagan |
2002 | Bruce Cole |
2004 | Maya Lin |
2006 | Jonathan Miller |
2007 | Mikhail Gorbachev |
2008 | Mark Helprin |
2014 | Rabbi Jonathan Sacks |
2015 | Nostra Aetate: Bishop Brian Farrell & Rabbi David Rosen |
2016 | General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.) |
2017 | Krzysztof Zanussi |
2018 | Ross Douthat & Austen Ivereigh, moderated by John Allen Jr. |
Reading Signs of Time in our Days
March 29, 2017
The 2017 Eugene McDermott Lecture by Krzysztof Zanussi
Three Visions of Excellence
Louise Cowan, Leo Strauss, & Jacob Klein on Liberal Education
March 22, 2012
A lecture by Dr. Christopher Lynch of Carthage College
The Pleasures of Philosophizing & its Moral Foundations
March 15, 2012
The Braniff Graduate Student Association (BGSA), along with the Politics and Philosophy
Departments and the Dean of the Braniff Graduate School, are honored to welcome James
Carey to give the BGSA second annual lecture.
Ancients and Moderns: Did Leo Strauss Exaggerate the break?
April 2011
A Politics Faculty Roundtable, featuring Leo Paul de Alvarez, Jonathan Culp, Richard
Dougherty, Tiffany Jones Miller, and Thomas G. West, discuss whether Leo Strauss exaggerated
the break between Ancient and Modern thinkers.
Aristophanes' Critique of the Gods
March 18, 2011
Wayne Ambler of the University of Colorado at Boulder explores Aristophanes’ hilariously
radical, but yet not atheistic, critique of the gods in three of Aristophanes' comedies—Peace, Wealth, and especially Birds—which feature mortal heroes who find fault with Zeus, challenge his authority, and
even prove victorious over him.
The Scandal of Dante's Catholicism - Part I
March 18, 2009
The Scandal of Dante's Catholicism - Part II
March 23, 2009
Dr. Robert Hollander visits the University of Dallas to give two lectures.
The Poetic Imagination & Education: The Continuing Influence of Louise S. Cowan
March 22-23, 2007
Alumni of the IPS gather along with its founder, Dr. Louise S. Cowan, to articulate
the centrality of imagination to their various disciplines in the pursuit and expression
of wisdom. Includes a major address by Dr. Cowan.
Through the McDermott Lectureship, the University of Dallas and the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts hosts exceptional guest lecturers and distinguished faculty members on thought-provoking topics within the Western tradition. Prominent scholars have spoken on Homer, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, Locke, Tocqueville and Leo Strauss, to name a few.