German Jews: Thought, Race, and Identity

Catalog description

This course offers an introduction to German Jewish thought from the 18th century to the present day. We will explore the way Jews in the German-speaking world understood their identities in the face of changing cultural and political contexts and the literary and philosophical works they produced in the face of antisemitism, discrimination, and genocide. This course covers the major themes and events in German-Jewish cultural history, including the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), fin de si'cle Vienna, Zionism, exile and migration, the Holocaust, and the modern German Jewish renaissance, with readings from Moses Mendelsohn, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Max Czollek, and more. We will pay special attention to the way the German Jewish experience challenges our understanding of identity categories such as race and religion, as well as concepts of whiteness, Europeanness, and the modern nation state.