This project traces the changing ways in which antisemitism has been conceived and defined by Jews and their allies from the 1880s, when the word antisemitism first became commonplace, to the early twenty-first century. It reveals how the meaning of the term antisemitism has changed in parallel with different civil, political and national rights claims made by and on behalf of Jews.
Essays emerging from this project have appeared in:
- ‘Antisemitism and Islamophobia’ in special issue: ‘Antisemitism: Historical Concept, Public Discourse’, Zion: A Quarterly for Research in Jewish History, 2020, pp. 295-310 (in Hebrew).
- ‘Towards a History of the Term “Anti-Semitism”’, AHR Roundtable ‘Rethinking Anti-Semitism’, American Historical Review, October 2018, pp. 1139-1150.
- ‘Islamophobia and Antisemitism’ in O. Khan (ed.) Islamophobia Twenty Years On, Runnymede Trust, 2017.
The results of the project will form the basis of a book under contract to Princeton University Press.
Contact: David Feldman, Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.
