The Jewish Studies Program at Ithaca College will present a talk by Martin Shuster, professor of philosophy and the Isaac Swift distinguished professor of Jewish studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, on Monday, October 13, at 7 pm, in Textor 103 on the Ithaca College campus. He will speak on “New Television and Jewish Historiography: The Case of Transparent.” The talk is free and open to the public.
“Amazon’s 2014 show, ‘Transparent,’ was groundbreaking in many ways, not least in how richly and poignantly it represented gender identity and queer dynamics,” said organizers of the event. “This talk revisits the show to argue that in addition to its aesthetic, cultural and political merits as a work of new television, the show was also a remarkable bit of Jewish historiography, comparable in that sense to other Jewish modes of memorialization like literature, song or even prayer.”
In addition to his positions at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Shuster is affiliated with the Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, and with the program in capitalism studies. In 2023, he founded the Philosophy and Critical Theory Lab (PaCT Lab). His research ranges topically across political philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, critical theory, philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy. He also engages in fields like genocide studies, film theory, television studies, psychoanalysis and various kinds of critical theory. 
In addition to his scholarly writing, Shuster writes for public-facing venues, most recently, for example, the Forward, Aeon, The Montréal Review, The LA Review of Books and the Philosophical Salon. He’s also been involved with teaching in prisons, both officially and as a volunteer. He is currently completing three books: “Genocide and the State: An Alternative History of Modern Political Philosophy,” the “Oxford Handbook of Theodor W. Adorno” (with Henry Pickord), and “Lifting” with Duke University Press in its “Practices” series. With Sandra Laugier and Robert Sinnerbrink, he edits the “TV-Philosophy” book series at University of Exeter Press.