Author Natalie Zemon Davis to speak Nov. 29

Distinguished author and historian Natalie Zemon Davis will speak at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29, at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St. as part of The Humanities Without Boundaries Lecture Series.

Davis is best known as the author of 1983 biography, “The Return of Martin Guerre,” her exploration of mistaken identity in a 16th-century French village. She also collaborated on the movie adaptation starring Gerard Depardieu.

Davis is currently adjunct professor of history and senior fellow in comparative literature at the University of Toronto. The Center for the Humanities is sponsoring Davis’s free public lecture, “Jews, Africans, and Philosophes: The Suriname Stories of David Cohen Nassy.”

In her lecture, Davis will discuss how Nassy, a Jewish leader in the Dutch colony of Suriname in the late 18th century, moved between the world of the Enlightenment and the ferment of colonial thought. She also will talk about how Nassy — also a man of letters, physician and slaveowner — viewed slavery and how he related to the Africans and Indians of Suriname.

“Natalie Zemon Davis is one of the world’s most distinguished historians of early modern Europe,” says Robert Kingdon, professor emeritus in history. “She is a brilliant lecturer, many of her lectures have become prize-winning articles and been published in books.”

More information: Center for the Humanities, (608) 263-3409.