DHUM 25A41 - Jews and Multiculturalism in the United States and France, 1945 to the Present

This class will provide a transnational and comparative overview of Jewish life in postwar France and the United States. These two countries emerged as home to the largest Jewish populations in the world outside of the State of Israel after 1945. Despite important differences between them, both France and the United States are built on a rational, voluntaristic and ethnically neutral concept of citizenship. In the postwar years, both countries have also become more diverse in real social terms and also more open to the idea that heritage communities should claim their rightful place in the public sphere. Throughout this class, we will examine the various ways in which multiculturalism in the larger sense and Jewish difference in particular have been conceptualized and experienced in these two national settings, considering both similarities and differences between the United States and France.

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Requirements for the class include doing the weekly readings, participation (to be measured by both oral contributions to class discussion and short impromptu written exercises, (20%) completing one short writing assignment (3-4 pages) (40%) and a final assignment (50%) that will provide students with the opportunity to choose from several different formats:

a traditional paper; creating a short film or podcast together with one or two other students’ creating a website, blog or vlog, created either individually or with one or two other students.