Lecture
Judge Dennis Davis and Deborah Posel
Monday 23.02.2026
Judge Dennis Davis and Deborah Posel
Discussion of ‘Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony’
Monday 23.02.2026
How to watch
This lecture starts on 23 February at 7:00pm (UK).
Summary
Dennis and author Deborah Posel discuss her important new book, Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony, a sweeping story with intimate roots, tracing a little-known chapter in the history of global migration: the journey of Jewish families from the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement to the far-flung colony of South Africa at the turn of the 20th century.
Judge Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is a judge of the High Court of South Africa and judge president of the Competition Appeals Court of South Africa. He has held professorial appointments at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, as well as numerous visiting appointments at Cambridge, Harvard, New York University, and others. He has authored eleven books, including Lawfare: Judging Politics in South Africa.
Deborah Posel
Author Deborah Posel is a South African sociologist who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town. She was the founding director of two prominent interdisciplinary research institutes, UCT’s Institute for Humanities in Africa and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research. She has researched and published widely on South African society and history. Her recent book Darker Shade of Pale: From Shtetl to Colony is available for purchase on Amazon and NYU press.