Book Talk Fall Quarter 2026

Thursday, October 1

4:10 pm

Andrews Room, SSH Building

Please join us and Yonatan Binyam, Assistant Professor of Ancient Mediterranean and Ethiopic Studies at UC Berkeley, in his talk titled "Out of Egypt: The Origins of Civilization in American Ethnology and the Against Apion". 

This talk presents a comparative analysis of narratives about the origins and evolution of civilization as they appear in certain nineteenth-century American ethnological texts and in Josephus's Against Apion. It aims to illustrate comparative narrative analysis as a fruitful approach to analyzing the questions raised by recent works on the question of ancient antisemitism and premodern race or racism.

We look forward to seeing you there!