Peter Gay, a prominent author and historian, will speak on the topic of ?Modernism in Exile? as part of The Humanities Lecture Series 2003-2004. His speech will also be the plenary lecture for the International Conference on Exile Studies, sponsored by The North American Society for Exile Studies and KU?s Max Kade Center for German-American Studies.

Gay?s lecture will draw on his own experiences as an exile from Nazi Germany. His life in Germany and his escape from the country formed the basis for his 1998 memoir, My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin. The book detailed the contradictions of everyday life under the Nazi dictatorship and Gay?s own conflicting emotions for the country of his birth.

On the day following his Humanities lecture, Gay will be the keynote speaker in a workshop on the Enlightenment and its discontents. More details on this workshop will follow at a later date.

Gay made his mark writing books that feature impeccable historical research encased in a style that makes them accessible and enjoyable to a wide variety of readers. Many of his other works chronicle the history of Victorian society in Europe. Among these are: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud: Vol.V, Pleasure Wars (1997), part of a series which examines the surprisingly dynamic and attractive attitude of the bourgeoisie to sexuality and love; and Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle-Class Culture, 1815?1914 (2001), a book which explores Victorian attitudes about everything from sex, class and masturbation to anti-Semitism, criminal punishment and the notion of privacy.

Born in Berlin in 1923, Gay emigrated to the United States in 1939. He taught at Columbia and then at Yale before accepting the directorship of the New York Public Library?s Center for Scholars and Writers. He has published many books dealing with his favorite themes: Freud, Victorian culture and the Enlightenment. Gay has received The National Book Award; the first Amsterdam Prize for Historical Science from The Hague (1990); and the Gold Medal of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (1992).

Co-sponsored by:
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Humanities and Western Civilization Program, the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education with special support from the Tension Envelope Foundation, in memory of E.B. Berkowitz and Walter J. Berkowitz.

Partial funding for the Humanities Lecture Series is provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities' 2000 Challenge Grant.

This event is free and open to the public.

September 4, 2003
7:30 p.m.
Kansas Union Ballroom

Other related events:
Colloquium - "The Enlightenment and Its Discontents"