Event

In 2017 in Charlottesville, antisemitism and anti-Black racism converged as white supremacists, in a highly choreographed and violent protest against the removal of a statue honoring a Confederate general, carried Confederate flags and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Yet, for decades, scholars have tended to approach the history of anti-Black racism, and of anti-Jewish animus and antisemitism separately. In this talk, Magda Teter, the author of Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism, will explore the deep roots of that connection and the interplay between Christian theology and law to demonstrate how legal and theological frameworks created centuries ago have led to the creation of social hierarchies, legal exclusion of and a denial of equality to Jews and Black people also in modern times.

Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is the author of several books, most recently, Blood Libel: On the Trail of An Antisemitic Myth (2020) and Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (2023), and articles in English, Hebrew, Italian, and Polish. Teter’s research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, HF Guggenheim Foundation, Radcliffe Institute, the Cullman Center at the NYPL, the NEH, and others. She is currently President of the American Academy of Jewish Research.

This is the 38th Annual Joseph Alexander Colloquium in the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, sponsored by the Joseph Alexander Foundation and the Mackler Family. It is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Center for Africana Studies at Penn.

This event is in-person, with an option to watch the livestream.

Registration at the link below is required for the Zoom webinar.