The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism holds seminars, workshops and conferences for scholars, and lectures, discussions and film screenings that are open to everyone.
May 2022 - December 2022
This seminar provides a forum for academic research and discussion on the character, causes and extent of contemporary antisemitism and what can and should be done about it.
“The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till” (2005), produced and directed by Keith Beauchamp, presents a compelling examination of racism in 1950s America. This award winning documentary, which took over nine years to complete, examines the circumstances surrounding the murder of Emmett Till and the outrage that followed.
In this seminar Valentina Pisanty asks whether over the last twenty years the simultaneous growth of Holocaust memorialisation and racism are two independent historical threads, or whether there is a connection between them? She asks whether a society which wishes to oppose the current wave of xenophobia should examine this contradiction?
This lecture looks at popular suspicions that Jack the Ripper was a Jewish migrant and the reactions to these accusations among Jews. By looking at contemporary reportage in newspapers we will see how readers and writers used print media to draw attention to the boundaries between ‘Englishman’ and foreigner, fact and fiction, and the limits of religious certitude in the face of inexplicable evil.
In James Baldwin’s protracted and ambivalent engagement with Holocaust history and memory in the 1960s, Baldwin coded moral orientations toward the Holocaust to political orientations toward Black oppression and revolt.
Our work shows how antisemitism has often been intertwined with anti-Muslim, anti-migrant, anti-black and anti-Irish bigotries. Antisemitism and other racisms should not be considered in isolation and still less in competition.
Professor David Feldman, Director