{"id":58735,"date":"2014-03-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/author-and-historian-denise-spellberg-to-give-talk-at-uri-about-the-story-of-thomas-jeffersons-quran-april-7\/"},"modified":"2014-03-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T00:00:00","slug":"author-and-historian-denise-spellberg-to-give-talk-at-uri-about-the-story-of-thomas-jeffersons-quran-april-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/03\/author-and-historian-denise-spellberg-to-give-talk-at-uri-about-the-story-of-thomas-jeffersons-quran-april-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Author and historian Denise Spellberg to give talk at 溏心vlog免费B站 about the story of Thomas Jefferson\u2019s Quran, April 7"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tApril 7 talk celebrates 20th anniversary of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Center for the Humanities<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 12, 2014 \u2013 Among Thomas Jefferson\u2019s vast library of 10,000 titles was an unusual book: a Quran that he bought in 1765, eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n


\nThat purchase sparked a lifelong interest in Islamic law and religion, argues author and historian Denise A. Spellberg in her book, Thomas Jefferson\u2019s Qur\u2019an: Islam and the Founders.<\/p>\n


\nSpellberg will talk about her findings Monday, April 7, at 4 p.m.<\/b>, in the Agnes G. Doody Auditorium at Swan Hall, 60 Upper College Road, on the Kingston campus. The talk, celebrating the 20th anniversary of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Center for the Humanities, is free and open to the public. A reception will be held there at 3 p.m.<\/b>, followed by the lecture and a book signing.<\/p>\n


\nJefferson ordered an English translation of the sacred Islamic text when he was a law student at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Although Europeans and Americans were somewhat hostile to Islam at the time, Jefferson\u2019s purchase showed that he was, at the very least, curious about the religion and law of Muslims.<\/p>\n


\nCritics have praised Spellberg\u2019s book for revealing how Jefferson and the other founding fathers valued religious tolerance for not only various Protestant groups, but also for the country\u2019s future Muslim citizens. That tolerance embodied Jefferson\u2019s universal principle of civil rights for all Americans and progressive position on religious tolerance.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cDenise Spellberg documents in detail where, when, and how Muslims were first included in American ideals,\u201d wrote critic and author Bernard Bailyn, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. \u201cAn exploration of the extent of the founders\u2019 pluralism, the book is not only a notable addition to our understanding of Jefferson, but a significant comment on the world today.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nR.B. Bernstein, of the Daily Beast, calls the book a must-read in \u201cthese troubled times,\u201d as it examines the relationship of Islam to America in the nation\u2019s founding era.<\/p>\n


\nA scholar of Islamic history, Spellberg received her bachelor\u2019s degree from Smith College and her doctorate in Middle Eastern history from Columbia University. She is an associate professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n


\nFrom 1989 to 1990, she was a visiting lecturer in women\u2019s studies and the history of religion at Harvard Divinity School. <\/p>\n


\nSpellberg has won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and a Carnegie Foundation Scholarship. She has also won three teaching awards: the President\u2019s Associates Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award in History; the Dad\u2019s Centennial Teaching Fellowship for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction, and the Harry Ransom Teaching Award. In September 2013, she was nominated to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.<\/p>\n


\n\tSpellberg\u2019s first book, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of \u2018A\u2019isha bint Abi Bakr, was published in 1994. In 2009, the Women\u2019s Cultural Association of Istanbul, Turkey awarded the book its Dost (Friend) Prize in recognition of its \u201cuniversal contribution to Islamic Studies.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s Qur\u2019an: Islam and the Founders was published in 2013. It has been reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, and other publications. Spellberg has also been featured on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d and WBUR\u2019s \u201cOn Point.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n A 10-minute film about the history of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Center for the Humanities will be shown before Spellberg\u2019s talk.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe are delighted to feature Denise Spellberg as the keynote speaker for the 20th anniversary of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Center for the Humanities,\u201d said Winnie Brownell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. \u201cThe center has played a significant role in supporting the discovery and dissemination of critical and award-winning scholarship and creative work in the humanities over the past two decades.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above: Denise A. Spellberg will discuss her book, Thomas Jefferson\u2019s Qur\u2019an: Islam and the Founders, on April 7, at 4 p.m., in the Agnes G. Doody Auditorium at Swan Hall, 60 Upper College Road, on the Kingston campus. The talk is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

\nPhoto courtesy of Denise A. Spellberg.\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 7 talk celebrates 20th anniversary of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Center for the Humanities KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 12, 2014 \u2013 Among Thomas Jefferson\u2019s vast library of 10,000 titles was an unusual book: a Quran that he bought in 1765, eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. That purchase sparked a lifelong interest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}