Race, Racism, and Anti-Racist Movements in Modern Europe
Fall and Winter, 2007-2008.
Thursdays, 9:00-12:00
Prof. Leora Auslander
HMW 608, tel 702-7940
Email:
Office Hours: Harper Memorial West 608, Thursdays 1:30-3:30 (sign-up sheet on the door)
Contacting me:
Please use the sign-up sheet for office hours. If you can’t make my hours, then email me for an appointment. Email is the better means to reach me than the phone, but if you have substantive questions, please come to office hours.
Description:
During the first term of this two-quarter research seminar we will examine conceptions of race, forms of racism (including anti-Semitism), and anti-racist movements in France and the German lands from the late eighteenth century through the late twentieth. We will briefly consider eighteenth-century understandings of race before moving on to an analysis of the place of those understandings in the emancipation of both Jews and slaves during the French Revolution. Nineteenth-century topics will include: intersections of race and nation, abolitionism, French understandings of race in Algeria, new conceptions of racial difference in 19th century imperialism, and changes in anti-Semitism. Twentieth-century themes will include the meanings of race under the Third Reich and Vichy, decolonization and postcolonial Europe, implications of Europeanification and German reunification for racial thinking, the “new” racism and anti-racist mobilizations.
Readings for the fall quarter will all be in English. Students planning to specialize in French, German or Central European history will, however, be required to use the appropriate languages in their Winter quarter seminar papers.
Each session will include discussion of both primary and secondary materials. Primary sources analyzed will include texts, visual and material culture, and music. Most of the secondary literature will be historical, but the approaches of social theorists, literary scholars and anthropologists will also be considered.
Enrolment permitting, the Fall quarter may be taken alone. The Fall quarter is, however, a prerequisite for the Winter.
Requirements:
Common requirements (seminar and colloquium students):
1) It is, of course, expected that you will attend all classes having read and thought about the readings for the week. Active, thoughtful and responsive participation is expected of all students. Honing your skills in intellectual debate is a crucial part of your graduate education. Coming to seminar with ideas you want to discuss, and offering those ideas, is required. A seminar should not, furthermore, consist of a series of exchanges between individual students and the instructor, but rather be a collective conversation. It is therefore essential that you listen attentively, and respond, to your colleagues’ interventions.
It is your responsibility to learn to speak/improve your participation in scholarly settings, it is mine to help you to do so. I will, therefore, be happy to provide strategies for participation for those who find speaking difficult. I will also provide you with comments on participation at the end of the fifth week of the quarter. If, however, you discover in the early weeks of the course that you are having difficulty finding your voice, please come to my office hours before waiting for the mid-term evaluation.
2) Two students will be assigned to lead class discussion for weeks 3-10. You will be asked to submit your first, second, and third choices of weeks by midnight Friday (September 28) following the seminar’s first meeting. I will post your assignments by Sunday morning (September 30). You should plan to meet with your partner to plan your strategy and then discuss it with me on the Wednesday preceding the relevant class (normally at 4:30-5:15, but I can make another time if that’s impossible). You are not expected to read beyond the assigned readings, nor to lecture, but rather to identify key themes and issues in the readings and construct a sequence of questions to lead discussion in a productive direction.
Seminar Students (Fall and Winter)
Seminar credit requires a substantial research effort resulting in a paper that approximates the size and scope of a learned-journal article (circa 30-35 pages, including notes). In thinking about seminar paper topics, please remember that it is advisable to select a topic of manageable (and monographic) proportions, and not to try to write a book in 35 pages. Start small and grow large, not the other way around. It is also highly advisable to construct topics for which sources are available in Chicago or on the web; Interlibrary loan is unpredictable.
Please do not forget Special Collections and particularly the Rosenberger collection (for those interested in Jewish topics) as you think about your papers.
I have provided additional bibliography for most of the topics covered in the course: Please note that those are far from exhaustive; they are a starting, not a finishing point.
Written work in the Fall for the Seminar Paper:
1) All students will be asked to submit initial thoughts on topics for their papers on Friday, October 12. These will be discussed in office hours during the following two weeks.
2) Two page statements of intent will be due on November 9.
3) A complete proposal (with bibliography) due on November 30.
Fall-quarter only Colloquium Students:
You will be asked to write a fifteen-page historiographical review. Please submit a one page description and complete bibliography on November 30. The papers will be due onDecember 15.
The additional bibliographies are provided to facilitate initial research on historiographic They should not be viewed as complete or exhaustive. Once you decide on a topic for your historiographic essay please start with the relevant bibliography, then delve further in the library and consult with me.
Books and Documents:
The following books have been ordered for purchase from the Seminary Coop Bookstore:
Jean-Loup Amselle, Affirmative exclusion : cultural pluralism and the rule of custom in France
Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, New Have: Yale
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945,
Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French
Caribbean, 1787-1804
Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean 1789-1804. A Brief
History with Documents.
Alain Finkielkraut, The Imaginary Jew
Arthur de Gobineau, Inequality of Human Races
Tricia Danielle Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France,
Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews
Paul Silverstein, Paul, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation
Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the
Two World Wars
Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany,
The following was ordered and is in the bookstore, but we will only be reading one or two essays from it, so you might want to save money here:
Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, eds Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities
and the Politics of Anti-Racism
The following should be ordered immediately from Amazon (the first is out of stock at the publishers and only available in used copies and the second much cheaper through used dealers):
Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State and Community,
Emmanuel C. Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Blackwell, 1997
The books and articles have also been put on reserve in Regenstein Library but the list went in a bit late, so you may need to purchase the early books and the shorter early materials will be on the course’s chalk site. Please do not assume that everything is on electronic reserve; if there is only a hard copy please be considerate of your colleagues. Plan ahead, Xerox; in any case don’t hoard.
Thursday, September 27: Introduction—Thinking Race
Please read/listen to/look at the following before class on the 27th:
Code Noir, pp. 49-53 in Dubois and Garrigus Slave Revolution or on the web at:: chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/335
1998 Rap song, “inspired” by the Code Noir ( French only): Fabe Feat Neg’lyrical/Rachid/Neg’madnik; Code Noir: Crime contre l’humanité. Double H Production, Hh 0004, France: 1998. or
(may have sound)
Emancipation of the Jews in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, pp. 114-121
The Abolition of Slavery, Dubois and Garrigus, pp. 129-132
Napoleonic Re-Enslavement
Napoleonic innovations in Judaism, Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, pp. 123-136 and
139-140.
Léopold Sedar Senghor, “Négritude” A Humanism for the 20th century,” in Senghor, The
Africa Reader: Independent Africa (1970), pp. 179-92 or in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, pp. 27-36
Aimé Césaire, from Notes
Martin Buber, “Judaism and the Jews,” (1909) ch. 1 in his On Judaism (New York:
Schocken, 1967)
Alain Finkielkraut, The Imaginary Jew (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994 [1980],
ch. 1 and ch. 3.
Nuremberg laws,
Statut des Juifs, (French)
Images (to be shown in class)
Tirailleurs Sénégalais/Banania
Race in Advertisements
Dreyfus Era cartoons
Thursday, October 4: The Eighteenth Century
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Preface to 1st ed., Ch. 1 pp. 3-10; ch 5-6,
pp. 123-184; ch. 7: pp. 185-97 and 207-221; ch. 9: pp. 267-302; ch. 13: 460-79.
Bruce Baum, “Enlightenment Science and the Invention of the ‘Caucasian Race,’ ca.
1684-1795, ch. 2 in The rise and fall of the Caucasian race: a political history of
racial identity.
David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840, part I.
Allysa Goldstein-Sepinwall: “Eliminating Race, Eliminating Difference: Blacks,
Jews, and the Abbé Gregoire,” in Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, The
Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) Pg. 28-41.
Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State and Community, chs. 1 and 2
Primary:
Emmanuel C. Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Blackwell, 1997, pp 10-14; 65-78 ,91-95.
Thursday, October 11: Revolution, Slavery, Abolition
Dubois, Colony of Citizens, parts I and II.
Primary:
Dubois and Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean 1789-1804. A Brief History with
Documents, pp. 63-132.
Sunday, October 14. 6:00-8:00 pm, Special Session 1: Thinking about Seminar Papers
This first pot-luck special session will provide an occasion to start thinking about seminar papers. I will provide my guidelines on strategies and you should come with ideas, questions, anxieties. This session will be held at my home. Directions will be provided in class.
Thursday, October 18: Thinking Race in the 19th century, 1
Jean-Loup Amselle, Affirmative exclusion : cultural pluralism and the rule of custom in France,
Primary:
Emmanuel C. Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, Blackwell, 1997, pp. 109-149.
Thursday, October 25: Thinking Race in the 19th century, 2
Andrew Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany, chs. 1-6
Primary:
Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, chs 1-5.
Thursday, November 1: Late 19th century, Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Imperialism
Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism, chs. 7-10
Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, Lora Wildenthal, “Colonial Racism and Antisemitism,” pt 3 in their
Germany’s Colonial Past (Nebraska, 2005)
Peggy Anderson, “Down in Turkey, Far Away,”... JMH, 2007
Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies, part II.
Primary:
Images from the Dreyfus Affair, Colonial Expositions
Thursday, November 8: “Minority culture” in the Interwar period?
Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State, chs. 1, 2, 5 and 6
Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, chs. 1, 2 and 5
Primary:
Léopold Senghor, TBA
Martin Buber, TBA
Images of “Jewish” and “Black” art in the interwar period.
Thursday, November 15: Conceptualizing Race in The Third Reich and Vichy
Burleigh and Wipperman, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, pp. 23-113; 242-266
Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, Lora Wildenthal, “Nazi Visions of Africa,” part 4 in their Germany’s Colonial Past (Nebraska, 2005)
Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, pp. 1-72; 121-190.
Thursday, November 22 – Thanksgiving. No class
Thursday, November 29: The complexities of Race in Postcolonial Europe
Heide Fehrenbach, Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and
America, pp. 1-131.
Tricia Danielle Keaton, Muslim Girls and the Other France, chs. TBA
Paul Silverstein, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation, chs. TBA
Primary:
Film: La Haine-Time and place of screening to be announced
Sunday, December 2. 6:00-8:00 pm, Special Session 2: Sharing Proposal Drafts
This second pot-luck special session will provide an occasion to share and discuss short proposals. These will be posted on chalk and should be read before coming to the meeting. Each participant will be asked to present her/his proposal in 5 minutes, followed by a brief Q and A.. This session will be held at my home.
Thursday, December 6: Antiracist Mobilization
Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, eds Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism , chs TBA
Sarah Waters, “Antiracism: Theory and Practice,” ch. 4 in her Social Movements in France
(Palgrave, 2004)
Pierre Birnbaum, Jewish Destinies, part III.
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