BIRKBECK INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM
Public lecture
‘The Dreyfus Affair, antisemitism, and the transformation of Jewish identity’
Date: 11 March 2025
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Speaker: Maurice Samuels, Yale University
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL
Booking: Free event – book here: https://bisa.bbk.ac.uk/event/the-dreyfus-affair-antisemitism-and-the-transformation-of-jewish-identity/
Short synopsis: The antisemitism unleashed during the Dreyfus Affair transformed the nature of Jewish identity, changing how Jews saw their place in the world and their relation to other Jews.
Full synopsis: The antisemitism unleashed during the Dreyfus Affair transformed French society at the end of the nineteenth century. It also transformed the nature of Jewish identity, changing how Jews saw their place in the world and their relation to other Jews.
In this talk, Maurice Samuels, author of Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (2024), explores Jewish reactions to the Affair in different national contexts (including France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Russian Empire, and Germany), with particular attention paid to the effect of the Affair on Jewish political ideologies, from Zionism to socialism.
Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University, where he chairs the French Department and directs the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Cullman Center Fellowship at the New York Public Library, he is the author of five books, including most recently Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale University Press, 2024).