Modern Jewish Identities: Between Eastern Europe and the United States

Drawing on documentaries, historical fiction films, autobiographies and memoirs, this course explores how the diverse spectrum of Ashkenazi Jews living in the Russian empire and then Poland from 1900-1939 conceived of their identities as Jews and how their identities may have altered once they emigrated to the United States. After the Shoah, we examine how Jewish emigrants to the US and those Jews and their descendants who remained in postwar Poland/Ukraine sought contact with each other in attempts to rethink what it means to be a post-Holocaust Jew in their respective contexts and in dialogue with each other.