This course will focus on the sexist dimensions of contemporary antisemitism and the ways in which, under the auspicious of fighting against it, we are frequently confronted by its even more insidious manifestations. One key objective of the course is to better grasp the unintended and often paradoxical consequences of politics. This, in turn, may render us both less vulnerable to gaslighting and more effective in distinguishing strategies and alliances more effective in countering contemporary antisemitism – including, but not limited to, the rape denialism of post 10/7 and charges of pinkwashing prior.
Session 1: The paradoxical character of European integration
Seasoned observers of contemporary antisemitism ask: What is new? To address this query, we open with a brief consideration of Europe in the 1930s before moving to today’s soft-core Holocaust denial and the rise of “social justice” movements. Given ISGAP’s emphasis on globalization, this session centers on European cases and the European Union to furnish an important laboratory to explore a key paradox – how has the very transnational emphasis that was meant to counter the nationalism of Nazis proven so disappointing in offering Jews remedy against antisemitism? In short, this session considers antisemitism’s transnational character then and now with attention to Europe.
Session 2: The queer disappearance of sexism and antisemitism
The second session centers epistemological queries through a brief historical overview of “homosexual” persecution during the Holocaust to suggest that the suppression of this history has helped enhance the vulnerability of contemporary “LGBTQ” movements to anti-Zionist and antisemitic claims. It concludes with an epistemological observation that the more we study the Holocaust, the better positioned we are to acknowledge what we do not and cannot know.
Session 3: Sadism and Zionist free “feminism” – The Great Replacement
After our historical and epistemological sessions, we attend to the rise of sexual sadism in the 1980s, feminism’s demise and the cooptation by of women’s movements by profoundly reactionary and antisemitic forces that led to the “women’s marches” of 2017.
Session 4: From Rape Denialism to Israel Denialism – Today’s Antisemitism
The last session brings us to October 7th and the rape denials that has followed in its wake. This last session builds from the crucial lessons first three sessions. These include, among others, the transnational character of antisemitism, its operationalization through social movements, the capture of those movements and the deep confusion about the Jewish and feminist past that results. In consequence, we have been forced to contend with a denial of the historical and material reality of sexual abuse, antisemitism, and Jewish peoplehood.
Spring 2025
Online
4
April 21, April 28, May 5, May 12, 2025
Mondays, 11:00AM-12:00PM EST
R. Amy Elman is Professor of Political Science and the William Weber Chair of Social Science at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. She has received several awards for her scholarship including two Fulbright grants, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Mellon sabbatical grant, and a grant from the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew University. She has written four books. Her last was The European Union, Antisemitism and the Politics of Denial (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). Her two most recent articles include “The Mainstreaming of American Antisemitism: The Defeat of an Ideal” in the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism (2022) and a review of “The Modern State and Its Enemies: Democracy, Nationalism and Antisemitism,” in Antisemitism Studies (Fall, 2023)
