Anti-Semitism and Modern Europe

Catalog description

This class examines anti-Semitism and its opponents in 20th Century Europe, beginning with the Dreyfus Affair and continuing until the post-communist Jewish culture boom in Eastern Europe. It considers how anti-Semitism has motivated European political and social movements, as well as how both Jewish and non-Jewish political, cultural, and social movements have envisioned their work as responses to anti-Semitism. Topics include: the Dreyfus Affair; Protocols of the Elders of Zion (the most enduring anti-Semitic pamphlet of all time); Nationalism and anti-Semitism; Zionism, Bundism and other Jewish political movements as “answers” to anti-Semitism; Nazi propaganda, rescue, uprisings, and other forms of resistance during World War II; reckoning with the Holocaust; the complicated reality of Jewish life under communism; and recent Jewish culture festivals and tourism in Europe.