Kirsten Fermaglich

Monday October 10th, 2022

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Hybrid Event

Mchugh Commons (Upstairs JLK McHugh, Above the Preserve)

Antisemitism has become more visible and violent in the United States in the past decade than ever before, but Jews have faced hatred and discrimination in the United States throughout its history.  This presentation will identify some of the themes that have been at the core of world antisemitism for centuries, highlighting the ways in which those themes have been present in American politics, culture, and society.  Finally, it will help audience members to consider the ways that antisemitism is present in American life today and ways to combat it.

Kirsten Fermaglich is a Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Michigan State University.  Her most recent book, A Rosenberg By Any Other Name:  A History of Jewish Name Changing in America (NYU, 2018) was awarded the Saul Viener Book Prize by the American Jewish Historical Society in June 2019.  Fermaglich is also the author of American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis University Press, 2006) and the co-editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (2013), with Lisa Fine.  From 2016 through 2021, she was co-editor of the journal, American Jewish History, along with Daniel Soyer and Adam Mendelsohn.  She is currently pursuing two research projects:  one looks at antisemitism in the federal government, and the other focuses on the migration of Jewish academics to college towns throughout the South and Midwest in the years after World War II.