Introductory quiz; distribution of syllabus and explanation of course requirements; assignment of students into A, B, C, D & E reading and presentation groups. Following and as part of the introductory quiz, there will be an ungraded class discussion, talking about definitions of racism and anti-Semitism in light of both your own experience and what you have learned from the assigned readings for this first class. Reading: Kidd, Colin. The Forging of Races: 1-18; Ratansi, Ali. Racism: A Very Short Introduction: 25-44 & Beller, Stephen. Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction: 1-11, 55-77. (Beller and Ratansi can be found in the Resources folder marked “Textbooks,” and Kidd can be found in the folder marked “General Materials.”) Assignments/deadlines: Introductory quiz and discussion of racism and anti-Semitism based on above readings.

This seminar is introduced by a presentation from the lecturer – “Xenophobia and Race Prejudice in Classical Antiquity” – which examines the nature of racial prejudice in the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Was there a pronounced prejudice against Africans in the Classical World? Did the Greek world “invent” racism in the modern sense? Did ancient pagan Judeophobia anticipate later “anti-Semitism?” Discussion Seminar 1 – Was There Racism in Classical Antiquity? – looks at the contrasting perspectives of Benjamin Isaac, Eric Gruen and Frank Snowden on the nature of racism in the classical world. Reading: Isaac, Benjamin. “Racism: A Rationalisation of Prejudice in Greece and Rome.” In Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Benjamin Isaac & Joseph Ziegler, eds. The Origins of Racism in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009: 32-57. Assignments/deadlines: This seminar is introduced by the lecturer’s presentation. Groups A, B, C, D & E need to read their assigned reading and come to class prepared to discuss them and exchange ideas after the lecturer’s presentation.

This seminar unit examines the rise of the ritual murder accusation and later related “Blood Libel” in Crusading Europe. It asks one of the fundamental methodological questions to be explored in this course: is it anachronistic to talk of “anti-Semitism” in the European Middle Ages and early modern period? There is a special focus on the theories of Gavin I. Langmuir and his redefinition of the term “anti-Semitism.” Reading: Langmuir, Gavin I. Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990: 197-209; 263-298. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 2, Group A - The Mediaeval Blood Libel. Group A – presentation; Groups B, C, D & E– reading and discussion. In addition to the seminar, there will be a lecturer presentation on the Bible and the use of biblical texts to justify anti-Judaism, anti-black racism and other forms of racial prejudice.

Seminar 3 - Race and the Inquisition: Jews, Moors and the Limpieza de Sangre in Spain and the Spanish New World – focuses on the 15th-16th century Spanish ethnic and religious cauldron, out of which one of the first seemingly “modern” doctrines of race emerged. Topics explored include the question of early modern “ethnic cleansing,” and the subsequent export of distinctively Iberian notions of race to the colonial societies of the New World. Readings: Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. New edition. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997: 214-55; Bethencourt, Francisco. Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013: 163-180 Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 3, Group B – Race and the Inquisition: Jews, Moors and the Limpieza de Sangre. Group C – presentation. Groups A, C, D & E – reading and discussion.

Most historians of race and racism trace the origins of these doctrines in their modern form to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries. Students will watch and discuss the documentary “The Colour of Money,” the first part of the BBC’s documentary series Racism: A History (2007). The seminar will explore one of the fundamental questions in the study of racism; namely, is “racism” as we understand it (a system of institutionalised discrimination based upon the alleged biological inferiority of a particular group) the precondition or the product of the transatlantic slave systems of the early modern and modern periods? Reading: Barbara Jean Fields. "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America." New Left Review, Issue 181, May/June 1990: 95-118; Sweet, James H. “The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 54, no. 1 (January 1, 1997): 143-166. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 4, Group C – Slavery or Racism: Which Came First? Group C – presentation; Groups A, B, D & E – reading and discussion.

Today’s seminar and student presentation examines the famous thesis of the late Polish Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who saw genocide and Nazism as symptoms of the crisis of industrial modernity. Also examined will the work of the radical Foucauldian historian Detlev Peukert. The work of these “Voltaire to Hitler” theorists will be examined against the critiques of scholars like Dan Brown, Yehuda Bauer and Stephen Bronner. Reading: Bauman, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge and New York: Polity Press, 1989: 83-116; Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 113-59. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 5, Group D – From Voltaire to Hitler?: Did the Enlightenment Lead to the Holocaust? Group E – presentation; Groups A, B, C and E – reading and discussion.

Topic: Race, Class and Nation in European History. Description: In contemporary discourse, there is a tendency to think of race and racism solely in terms of institutional prejudice and discrimination directed against blacks and indigenous people in the context of slavery, colonialism and their legacies. But as this seminar (and Seminar 9 later in the course) aims to remind us, racial ideas and racism were a staple of European political discourse since the later Middle Ages. Race theories were often used to justify – but very often to challenge – Europe’s hierarchical social order. This discussion seminar – lead by the instructor – examines the history of racial ideas in European political discourse from the “Norman Yoke” theory of the English Civil War; through the racial interpretation of the Ancien regime and the French Revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries and to the obsession with the racial origins of nation, class and class division in the later 19th century. Reading: Seliger, M. “The Idea of Conquest and Race-Thinking During the Restoration.” The Review of Politics, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Oct., 1960): 544-567; Barzun, Jacques. The French Race: Theories of Its Origins and Their Social and Political Implications Prior to the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932. Assignments/deadlines: None for this class, save for the readings listed for this seminar.

The revolt against the universal rationality of the Enlightenment saw the Romantic movement’s celebration of all that was early, primitive and unique. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder hailed unique languages as the most fundamental expression of the Volkgeist of particular peoples. By the mid-19th century, linguistically-based concepts like “Aryan” and “Semite” were increasingly being conflated with physiological racial classifications like hair colour and skull shape. Gobineau’s work is a watershed in this shift. Seminar 6 focuses on one of the most important pioneers of European racism, Comte Joseph de Gobineau, and on his influence on other key racist thinkers: the composer Richard Wagner and Henry Hotze, the apologist for the Confederacy and associate of the American School of polygenesis. Reading Dreher, Robert E. “Arthur de Gobineau, an Intellectual Portrait.” University of Wisconsin PhD, 1970: Chapter III, pp. 59-169. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 6, Group E – Gobineau and the Inequality of the Human Races. Group A – presentation. Groups A, B, C and D – reading and discussion. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 6, Group E – Gobineau and the Inequality of the Human Races. Group A – presentation. Groups A, B, C and D – reading and discussion.

Early nineteenth century America – a slave-owning society rapidly expanding into territories occupied by peoples deemed “racially inferior” – was to be the laboratory for ideas which would have a rapid a profound impact on the development of European racism. This seminar explores the connections between slavery, the growing popular belief in the concept of a “White Man’s Democracy,” and the rise of polygenism and biological racism in defence of slavery and “Manifest Destiny.” It builds upon the previous seminar on Gobineau, showing how the Comte’s theory of history was married with the physical racial theories – craniology and polygenesis – of the American School. There will be a lecturer presentation for this seminar, but no student presentation. Reading: Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. New Ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986: 98-157. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 7, Group A – A Science for Slavery? American Craniology and Polygenesis in Defence of Manifest Destiny and the “Peculiar Institution” – Group A – presentation. Groups B, C, D & E – reading and discussion.

When Hitler and Himmler articulated plans for the conquest and colonisation of the East, they drew explicit parallels and justifications from American westward expansion and British colonial policy in India. However, the connections between Nazi colonial practices in German South-West Africa in the early 20th century are far more direct. Students will watch and discuss the BBC documentary Racism: A History – Part 2: Fatal Impacts (2007). Seminar 8 will look at the crucial split in British anthropology in the 1860s between the anti-slavery, monogenist Ethnological Society of London – heir to the old Anti-Slavery and Aborigine’s Protection Societies - and the pro-slavery, pro- imperialist and polygenist Anthropological Society of London. This watershed event in the history of racial though is examined in the context of the American Civil War and Britain’s deepening imperial commitment. Reading: Lorimer, Douglas A. Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978: 131-212. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 8, Group B – From ESL to ASL: Race, Empire and the American Civil War - Group C – presentation. Groups A, C, D and E – reading and discussion.

This class examines the closely related rise of the notion of an “Aryan” and a “Semite” race. From their origins as uncontroversial linguistic families, we will trace the way they became conflated with physiological racial concepts by the mid to late-nineteenth century. From Ernest Renan’s linguistics to the Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s “Aryan Christ,” through to the eclectic anthropometric racial studies of Eugen Fischer and the race mysticism of the Nazi Party’s racial ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, we trace the lineages of the creation of these fictive racial groups. Reading: Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 160-202; Hutton, Christopher M. Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, Racial Anthropology and Genetics in the Dialectic of Volk. London: Polity, 2005: 35-112. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 9, Group C – From Language to Race: The Making of the Aryan and Semite Races – presentation; Groups A, B, D and E – reading and discussion. Research Essays due. All research essays must be submitted online at the NEO Assignment “Research Essay” by 23.59/11.59 pm CET Sunday, April 28th.

This seminar examines the intersections between racism, nationalism and eugenics in both the United States and Europe in the period leading up to the First World War – and beyond. We will explore the way in which racist thinkers like Madison Grant and Vacher de Lapouge married the racial theories of Gobineau with eugenics, anti-Semitism and the defence of Jim Crow and immigration restriction. Reading: Spiro, Jonathan Peter. Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Burlington: The University of Vermont Press, 2009: 143-166, 297-327; Hecht, Jennifer Michael. “Vacher de Lapouge and the Rise of Nazi Racial Science.” The Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 61. No. 2 (April, 2000): 285-304. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 10, Group D – Racism, Nordicism and Eugenics - Group D – presentation; Groups A, B, C and E – reading and discussion.

The final lecture demonstrates how the racism of Hitler, Himmler, Rosenberg and their followers represented the coming together of several streams of racialist thinking: anti-Semitism, biological racialism, Social Darwinism, colonial racism and eugenics. The radicalising effects of the violence and social militarisation of World War I and the Russian Revolution – from which the theory of “Judaeo-Bolshevism” and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery emerged – was an essential element in “the Nazi Synthesis.” Seminar 10 explores the components of Nazi racialism in more detail, with a particular focus on Nazi Lebensraum theories and their affinities with colonial racism and genocide. We will examine the debate over the connections between Nazi genocide and the Herero and Nama genocide perpetrated by the Second Reich in the early years of the 20th century – the so-called “Kaiser’s Holocaust.” Reading: Stone, Dan. Histories of the Holocaust. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 203-244. Assignments/deadlines: Presentation Seminar 11, Group E – The Colonial Roots of Nazi Genocide. Group E – presentation; Groups A, B, C & D – reading and discussion.

In 1978, the British production team that produced the acclaimed documentary series The World at War returned to their archives to compile a special programme on the Final Solution. The result was arguably the most harrowing and compelling Holocaust documentary of its length ever made. Jeremy Isaacs and his team interviewed many of the same survivors who were later to feature in Claude Lanzmann’s milestone documentary Shoah. Students will watch and discuss the second part of this documentary – The Final Solution – Part 2 (BBC, 1978). Reading: There are no set readings for the final class. An informal discussion and lecture tying the various threads of the course together. Assignments/deadlines: Final Reflection Papers due. Your Final Reflection Paper must be handed in to me in hard copy – in 12-point font and double-spaced – by the beginning of class at 11.30 am CET, Monday May 20th. In addition, a Word or PDF copy of the paper must also be uploaded to NEO LMS Turnitin assignment “Final Reflection Paper” by the same time and date.