Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Migration

Catalog description

This upper-level seminar, Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Modern Migration, immerses students in the vibrant history of not only Jewish migration, but how Jewish mobility became intertwined with vital trends in international migration, ranging from the rise of mercantilist trade networks in the early modern period to the codification of international migration law in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Over the semester, students will follow Sephardi merchants who traversed the Mediterranean, working-class Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, and Holocaust survivors who confronted their newfound statelessness. Like their historical subjects, students will travel the globe, from seventeenth century Surinam to the Soviet Union. This seminar encourages students to ask incisive questions, as they deliberate the legal, social, and cultural history of not only Jewish migration, but global migration. What circumstances compelled Jews to move? How did migration place Jews in new political systems, power dynamics, and cultural milieus? And finally, how do narratives of Jewish movement enhance our understanding of provocative themes at the center of the history of migration, such as open borders, free trade, forced deportation, and assimilation?