Unclean Lips: Jews, Obscenity, and American Culture

Join Young Professionals@Beth Tzedec for an evening to meet and chat with author Josh Lambert, an engaging young scholar. Dessert reception follows. RSVPs preferred.

Why are so many writers obsessed with both Jews and sex? And why were the defendants in the most significant American obscenity cases named Rosen, Roth, Ginsberg and Cohen? Lambert argues that we can't understand the place of Jews in American culture without attending to the roles they played in the history of the obscene. 

Josh Lambert is the Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide (2009) and Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews and American Culture (2013). A native Torontonian, he is a contributing editor to Tablet and has written for the Globe & Mail and the National Post.