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Mary Lefkowitz

January 01, 1970

Mary R. Lefkowitz (born April 30, 1935) is an American scholar of Classics. She is the Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she previously worked from 1959 to 2005. She has published ten books over the course of her career.

Mary Lefkowitz
Born (1935-04-30) April 30, 1935 (age 89)
New York, New York, United States
SpouseSir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (m. 1982-2009; his death)
Academic background
EducationWellesley College (BA)
Radcliffe College (PhD)
Academic work
InstitutionsWellesley College
Notable worksNot Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History; Black Athena Revisited

Lefkowitz studied at Wellesley College before obtaining a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College in 1961. During the 1980s much of her research focused on the place of women in the Classical world. She attracted broader attention for her 1996 book Not Out of Africa, a criticism of Afrocentric claims that ancient Greek civilization derived largely from that of ancient Egypt. She argued that such claims owed more to an American black nationalist political agenda than historical evidence. That decade, she also entered into a publicised argument with Africana studies scholar Tony Martin.

She served on the advisory board of the conservative advocacy group the National Association of Scholars.[1]

Biography edit

Lefkowitz was born to a Jewish family in New York City in 1935.[2] She earned her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1957, Phi Beta Kappa with honors in Greek, and received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University) in 1961. She returned to Wellesley College in 1959 as an instructor in Greek. In 1979 she was named Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, a position she held until her retirement in 2005. Lefkowitz holds an honorary degree from Trinity College (1996), which cited her "deep concern for intellectual integrity," and also from the University of Patras (1999) and from Grinnell College (2000). In 2004 she received a Radcliffe Graduate Society Medal. In 2006 she was awarded a National Humanities Medal "for outstanding excellence in scholarship and teaching." In 2008 she was the recipient of a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award.[3]

Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography. She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized.

Anti-Afrocentricism edit

The pinnacle of Mary Lefkowitz’s controversy surrounding Afrocentrism in the classics took form in her years-long scholarly debate with Martin Bernal. Bernal is the author of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,[4] a work that argues the deep influence of Egyptian (and therefore African) influence on Greek culture, language, and society. The claims that Martin Bernal argues in his text alarmed Lefkowitz to such an extreme that she wrote two texts. The first, Black Athena: Revisited,[5] is a collection of essays edited by Lefkowitz that responds directly to Bernal’s work with strong criticism. The second, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History,[6] is a text devoted to Lefkowitz’s anti-Afrocentrism argument, tying in her arguments against Bernal. The aforementioned work ignited what then became a continued back-and-forth between Lefkowitz and Bernal. Bernal wrote a response to Not Out Of Africa in which he attacked the legitimacy of Lefkowitz’s argument.[7] He argued that Lefkowitz “discover(s) what she wants and then fail(s) to check further”, and that her work is “sloppy” and clearly “written in a hurry”.[8] He attacked her argument, and character, by discussing her view of history as being what he calls the “Aryan Model” of history, in this way associating her argument with a word associated with Nazism and White Supremacy. This response was quickly followed up by Lefkowitz with her own response: Lefkowitz on Bernal on Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa.[9] In this, she took a fiery tone against Bernal, referring to him as B (a standard practice in academic book reviews), and defended her own claims while again working to refute Black Athena’s arguments.

This written debate culminated in a live debate when Lefkowitz and Bernal joined a discussion along with Dr. John Henrik Clarke and Guy MacLean Rogers.[10] Much like the paper responses, this debate was heated, with interruptions and intense disagreement.

The controversy continued when Lefkowitz’s Black Athena Revisited was reviewed by Molefi Kete Asante.[11] Asante criticizes Lefkowitz for her inability to believe that ancient Africans influenced Greek culture and emphasizes how although classical historians are quick to deny racism, racism is a huge part of their argument. Asante unveils what he believes is the true argument that these historians, Lefkowitz included, seek to make: “Their contention, in the face of evidence, is that it is improbable and even impossible that a black civilization could have any significant impact on a white civilization.” Asante emphasizes these arguments' connection to a history of colonialism and white supremacy, concluding that Black Athena: Revisited is a “helpful book for African scholars who are able to see in this volume all the agency that whites give to themselves and what they take away from Africans.”[12]

In 2008, Lefkowitz published History Lesson, which The Wall Street Journal described as a "personal account of what she experienced as a result of questioning the veracity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its advocates."[13] She was criticized in newsletters from the Wellesley Africana Studies Department by her colleague Tony Martin.[14] Martin stated in May 1994 at Cornell University that "Black people should interpret their own reality. . . . Jews have been in the forefront of efforts to thwart the interpretation of our own history."[15] In another incident described in her book, Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochannan, the author of Africa: The Mother of Western Civilization, gave the Martin Luther King lecture at Wellesley in 1993. Lefkowitz attended this lecture with her husband, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. In that lecture, Ben-Jochannan stated that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria, Egypt. During the question and answer session following the lecture, Lefkowitz asked Ben-Jochannan, "How would that have been possible, when the library was not built until after his death?" Ben-Jochannan replied that the dates were uncertain. Sir Hugh responded, "Rubbish!" Lefkowitz writes that Ben-Jochannan proceeded to tell those present that "they could and should believe what black instructors told them" and "that although they might think that Jews were all 'hook-nosed and sallow faced,' there were other Jews who looked like himself."[16]

Personal life edit

Lefkowitz was married to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Regius Professor Emeritus of Greek at Oxford University from 1982 until his death in 2009.[17]

Books edit

  • The Victory Ode : An Introduction (1976), ISBN 0-8155-5045-6 ISBN 978-0815550457
  • Heroines and Hysterics (1981), ISBN 0-7156-1518-1 ISBN 978-0715615188
  • The Lives of the Greek Poets (1981), ISBN 0-8018-2748-5 ISBN 978-0801827488
  • Women's Life in Greece and Rome (1982), editor, with Maureen Fant, ISBN 0-8018-8310-5 ISBN 978-0801883101
  • Women in Greek Myth (1986), ISBN 0-8018-8649-X ISBN 978-0801886492
  • First-person Fictions : Pindar's Poetic "I" (1991), ISBN 0-19-814686-8 ISBN 978-0198146865
  • Black Athena Revisited (1996), ISBN 0-8078-4555-8 ISBN 978-0807845554
  • Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History (1997), ISBN 0-465-09838-X ISBN 978-0465098385
  • Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn From Myths (2003), ISBN 0-300-10769-2 ISBN 978-0300107692
  • History Lesson (2008), ISBN 0-300-12659-X ISBN 978-0300126594
  • Lefkowitz, Mary R. “The Powers Of The Primeval Goddesses.” The American Scholar, 1989, pp. 586–591. (1989)
  • Lefkowitz, Mary R. “The Origins Of Greek Civilization: An Afrocentric Theory.” The Gail A. Burnett Lectures In Classics, 14 Apr. 1997. (1997)

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ van Binsbergen, Wim. Black Athena Comes of Age. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 81. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  2. ^ "A Classic Case | Alan Jacobs". First Things. 2008-11-01. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  3. ^ . Archived from the original on June 15, 2011. Retrieved 2008-06-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), Wellesley College
  4. ^ Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Rutgers University Press, 2020.
  5. ^ Lefkowitz, Mary R. Black Athena Revisited. Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997.
  6. ^ Lefkowitz, Mary R. Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books, 1996.
  7. ^ Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Martin Bernal. “Not Out of Africa Review.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 5 Apr. 1996, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1996/1996.04.05/.
  8. ^ Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Martin Bernal. “Not Out of Africa Review.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 5 Apr. 1996, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1996/1996.04.05/.
  9. ^ Lefkowitz, Mary R. “Response: Lefkowitz on Bernal on Lefkowitz, Not out of Africa.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 19 Apr. 1996, https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1996/1996.04.19/.
  10. ^ “Dr. John Henrik Clarke vs Mary Lefkowitz: The Great Debate (1996) | Best Quality.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Jan. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmei-hUQUWY.
  11. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete. “Black Athena Revisited: A Review Essay.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 29, no. 1, 1998, pp. 206–10. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820545. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
  12. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete. “Black Athena Revisited: A Review Essay.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 29, no. 1, 1998, pp. 206–10. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820545. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
  13. ^ John Leo. The Hazards of Telling the Truth, Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2008
  14. ^ History Lesson, p. 55
  15. ^ Cornell Daily Sun, 2 May 1994, p. 1
  16. ^ History Lesson, pp. 67–69.
  17. ^ Daily Telegraph obituary of Hugh Lloyd-Jones

External links edit

  • Afrocentrism, Talk of the Nation, 1997-07-09. NPR discussion with Lefkowitz and Maulana Karenga
  • Robert T. Carroll's book review of Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africaat Skepdic.com
  • Martin Bernal's review of Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa
  • Black Athena and the debate about Afrocentrism in the US by Thomas A. Schmitz (PDF)
  • an account of Lefkowitz's conflict with Tony Martin in her book: 'History Lessons' (The Times of London)

January 01, 1970
mary, lefkowitz, mary, lefkowitz, born, april, 1935, american, scholar, classics, professor, emerita, classical, studies, wellesley, college, wellesley, massachusetts, where, previously, worked, from, 1959, 2005, published, books, over, course, career, born, 1. Mary R Lefkowitz born April 30 1935 is an American scholar of Classics She is the Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley Massachusetts where she previously worked from 1959 to 2005 She has published ten books over the course of her career Mary LefkowitzBorn 1935 04 30 April 30 1935 age 89 New York New York United StatesSpouseSir Hugh Lloyd Jones m 1982 2009 his death Academic backgroundEducationWellesley College BA Radcliffe College PhD Academic workInstitutionsWellesley CollegeNotable worksNot Out of Africa How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History Black Athena Revisited Lefkowitz studied at Wellesley College before obtaining a Ph D in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College in 1961 During the 1980s much of her research focused on the place of women in the Classical world She attracted broader attention for her 1996 book Not Out of Africa a criticism of Afrocentric claims that ancient Greek civilization derived largely from that of ancient Egypt She argued that such claims owed more to an American black nationalist political agenda than historical evidence That decade she also entered into a publicised argument with Africana studies scholar Tony Martin She served on the advisory board of the conservative advocacy group the National Association of Scholars 1 Contents 1 Biography 2 Anti Afrocentricism 3 Personal life 4 Books 5 See also 6 References 7 External linksBiography editLefkowitz was born to a Jewish family in New York City in 1935 2 She earned her B A from Wellesley College in 1957 Phi Beta Kappa with honors in Greek and received her Ph D in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College now part of Harvard University in 1961 She returned to Wellesley College in 1959 as an instructor in Greek In 1979 she was named Andrew W Mellon Professor of the Humanities a position she held until her retirement in 2005 Lefkowitz holds an honorary degree from Trinity College 1996 which cited her deep concern for intellectual integrity and also from the University of Patras 1999 and from Grinnell College 2000 In 2004 she received a Radcliffe Graduate Society Medal In 2006 she was awarded a National Humanities Medal for outstanding excellence in scholarship and teaching In 2008 she was the recipient of a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award 3 Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology women in antiquity Pindar and fiction in ancient biography She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History In Black Athena Revisited 1996 which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers her colleague at Wellesley College the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized Anti Afrocentricism editThe pinnacle of Mary Lefkowitz s controversy surrounding Afrocentrism in the classics took form in her years long scholarly debate with Martin Bernal Bernal is the author of Black Athena The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization 4 a work that argues the deep influence of Egyptian and therefore African influence on Greek culture language and society The claims that Martin Bernal argues in his text alarmed Lefkowitz to such an extreme that she wrote two texts The first Black Athena Revisited 5 is a collection of essays edited by Lefkowitz that responds directly to Bernal s work with strong criticism The second Not Out of Africa How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History 6 is a text devoted to Lefkowitz s anti Afrocentrism argument tying in her arguments against Bernal The aforementioned work ignited what then became a continued back and forth between Lefkowitz and Bernal Bernal wrote a response to Not Out Of Africa in which he attacked the legitimacy of Lefkowitz s argument 7 He argued that Lefkowitz discover s what she wants and then fail s to check further and that her work is sloppy and clearly written in a hurry 8 He attacked her argument and character by discussing her view of history as being what he calls the Aryan Model of history in this way associating her argument with a word associated with Nazism and White Supremacy This response was quickly followed up by Lefkowitz with her own response Lefkowitz on Bernal on Lefkowitz Not Out of Africa 9 In this she took a fiery tone against Bernal referring to him as B a standard practice in academic book reviews and defended her own claims while again working to refute Black Athena s arguments This written debate culminated in a live debate when Lefkowitz and Bernal joined a discussion along with Dr John Henrik Clarke and Guy MacLean Rogers 10 Much like the paper responses this debate was heated with interruptions and intense disagreement The controversy continued when Lefkowitz s Black Athena Revisited was reviewed by Molefi Kete Asante 11 Asante criticizes Lefkowitz for her inability to believe that ancient Africans influenced Greek culture and emphasizes how although classical historians are quick to deny racism racism is a huge part of their argument Asante unveils what he believes is the true argument that these historians Lefkowitz included seek to make Their contention in the face of evidence is that it is improbable and even impossible that a black civilization could have any significant impact on a white civilization Asante emphasizes these arguments connection to a history of colonialism and white supremacy concluding that Black Athena Revisited is a helpful book for African scholars who are able to see in this volume all the agency that whites give to themselves and what they take away from Africans 12 In 2008 Lefkowitz published History Lesson which The Wall Street Journal described as a personal account of what she experienced as a result of questioning the veracity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its advocates 13 She was criticized in newsletters from the Wellesley Africana Studies Department by her colleague Tony Martin 14 Martin stated in May 1994 at Cornell University that Black people should interpret their own reality Jews have been in the forefront of efforts to thwart the interpretation of our own history 15 In another incident described in her book Yosef A A Ben Jochannan the author of Africa The Mother of Western Civilization gave the Martin Luther King lecture at Wellesley in 1993 Lefkowitz attended this lecture with her husband Sir Hugh Lloyd Jones In that lecture Ben Jochannan stated that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria Egypt During the question and answer session following the lecture Lefkowitz asked Ben Jochannan How would that have been possible when the library was not built until after his death Ben Jochannan replied that the dates were uncertain Sir Hugh responded Rubbish Lefkowitz writes that Ben Jochannan proceeded to tell those present that they could and should believe what black instructors told them and that although they might think that Jews were all hook nosed and sallow faced there were other Jews who looked like himself 16 Personal life editLefkowitz was married to Sir Hugh Lloyd Jones Regius Professor Emeritus of Greek at Oxford University from 1982 until his death in 2009 17 Books editThe Victory Ode An Introduction 1976 ISBN 0 8155 5045 6 ISBN 978 0815550457 Heroines and Hysterics 1981 ISBN 0 7156 1518 1 ISBN 978 0715615188 The Lives of the Greek Poets 1981 ISBN 0 8018 2748 5 ISBN 978 0801827488 Women s Life in Greece and Rome 1982 editor with Maureen Fant ISBN 0 8018 8310 5 ISBN 978 0801883101 Women in Greek Myth 1986 ISBN 0 8018 8649 X ISBN 978 0801886492 First person Fictions Pindar s Poetic I 1991 ISBN 0 19 814686 8 ISBN 978 0198146865 Black Athena Revisited 1996 ISBN 0 8078 4555 8 ISBN 978 0807845554 Not Out of Africa How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History 1997 ISBN 0 465 09838 X ISBN 978 0465098385 Greek Gods Human Lives What We Can Learn From Myths 2003 ISBN 0 300 10769 2 ISBN 978 0300107692 History Lesson 2008 ISBN 0 300 12659 X ISBN 978 0300126594 Lefkowitz Mary R The Powers Of The Primeval Goddesses The American Scholar 1989 pp 586 591 1989 Lefkowitz Mary R The Origins Of Greek Civilization An Afrocentric Theory The Gail A Burnett Lectures In Classics 14 Apr 1997 1997 See also editClassics Afrocentrism Zahi Hawass Frank M Snowden Jr References edit van Binsbergen Wim Black Athena Comes of Age LIT Verlag Munster p 81 Retrieved 12 May 2020 A Classic Case Alan Jacobs First Things 2008 11 01 Retrieved 2024 02 19 Mary Lefkowitz profile Archived from the original on June 15 2011 Retrieved 2008 06 03 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Wellesley College Bernal Martin Black Athena The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Rutgers University Press 2020 Lefkowitz Mary R Black Athena Revisited Univ of North Carolina Press 1997 Lefkowitz Mary R Not out of Africa How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History Basic Books 1996 Lefkowitz Mary R and Martin Bernal Not Out of Africa Review Bryn Mawr Classical Review 5 Apr 1996 https bmcr brynmawr edu 1996 1996 04 05 Lefkowitz Mary R and Martin Bernal Not Out of Africa Review Bryn Mawr Classical Review 5 Apr 1996 https bmcr brynmawr edu 1996 1996 04 05 Lefkowitz Mary R Response Lefkowitz on Bernal on Lefkowitz Not out of Africa Bryn Mawr Classical Review 19 Apr 1996 https bmcr brynmawr edu 1996 1996 04 19 Dr John Henrik Clarke vs Mary Lefkowitz The Great Debate 1996 Best Quality YouTube YouTube 27 Jan 2019 https www youtube com watch v fmei hUQUWY Asante Molefi Kete Black Athena Revisited A Review Essay Research in African Literatures vol 29 no 1 1998 pp 206 10 JSTOR http www jstor org stable 3820545 Accessed 2 Mar 2023 Asante Molefi Kete Black Athena Revisited A Review Essay Research in African Literatures vol 29 no 1 1998 pp 206 10 JSTOR http www jstor org stable 3820545 Accessed 2 Mar 2023 John Leo The Hazards of Telling the Truth Wall Street Journal April 15 2008 History Lesson p 55 Cornell Daily Sun 2 May 1994 p 1 History Lesson pp 67 69 Daily Telegraph obituary of Hugh Lloyd JonesExternal links editExcerpts from Mary Lefkowitz s Not Out of Africa Afrocentrism Talk of the Nation 1997 07 09 NPR discussion with Lefkowitz and Maulana Karenga Audio interview with Lefkowitz at National Review Online Robert T Carroll s book review of Mary Lefkowitz s Not Out of Africaat Skepdic com Martin Bernal s review of Mary Lefkowitz s Not Out of Africa Black Athena and the debate about Afrocentrism in the US by Thomas A Schmitz PDF The great Greek race odyssey an account of Lefkowitz s conflict with Tony Martin in her book History Lessons The Times of London Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mary Lefkowitz amp oldid 1223507074, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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