Description:

Rifka Cook was born and raised in a Sephardi family in Caracas, Venezuela. Since 2001, she has taught first and second-year Spanish at Northwestern University. Her research interests include the Sephardi Culture and its Judeo-Spanish language and the use of clickers and other technology tools (Blue Jeans) in the foreign language classroom. Cook has participated in several conferences in Argentina, United States, Israel and Spain, publishing her work in some of these countries. During this lecture, Cook will discuss the Sephardi people in Latin-America. She plans to discuss the year 1492, highlighting the expulsion of the Jews (and Moors) from Spain and the discovery of America. With these events stirring the collective memory of the threads of human history, Cook will explain how such landmark moments must be taken into consideration when speaking about the Sephardi people of Latin-America.