The 2022 McDermott Lectureship

The Challenge of Translating the Bible
Monday, March 21, 7:30 p.m.
Irving Arts Center

Purchase your ticket for the 2022 McDermott Lectureship.

^{*Early bird pricing is available through Feb. 28.}

Featuring Robert Alter

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.

The McDermott Lectureship

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. 

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.