478B PROBLEMS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1789 (Sutcliffe)

Meets with History 421 B and ANTHRO 450

Topic: Enlightenment/Modernity: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Jewish Past.

This interdisciplinary course will explore the significations of Jewishness in modern Western history, through a wide range of recent writings by historians, anthropologists, philosophers and cultural theorists.  We will consider the pre-modern roots of the position of Jews in Christian thought and society, but will focus more closely on the modern rearticulation of this relationship in the aftermath of the Enlightenment.  Key themes will include the emergence of modernh Jewish political, cultural and religious formations, constructions of Jewish otherness, and both Jewish and non-Jewish responses to the Holocaust.  We will read the Jewish / non-Jewish encounter as a crucial site for the elucidation of the dynamics of minority / majority relations in the modern West.  These themes are of obvious importance for historians of modern Europe.  However, the course will also encompass early modern Europe and America, and will be useful for specialists in any field who are interested in the interdisciplinary exploration of questions of cross-cultural relations.  The course will meet jointly with Anthropology 450, taught by Matti Bunzl.