The anthropological study of prejudice looks critically at the process of "othering" -- that is, the fear-based tendency to regard groups and individuals who are "dangerously different from us" in ways that emphasize ("their)" threat versus ("our)" safety. Logically, this perspective can lead to attitudes, policies, and actions that aim to annihilate the difference between "us" (the in-group) and "them" (the dangerous outsiders) -- either by forced assimilation or even by genocide.
This course examines the ways that prejudice has been a part of such murderous and inhumane activity, beginning with a sustained exploration of the role of anti-Semitic prejudice in pogroms that took place at a time and place when such violence would seem least likely to occur: almost immediately after the Holocaust, in the country where most of the Nazi death camps had been located. At the same time, the course serves as a vehicle for students to learn, in more general terms, how to read, question, analyze, talk and write about human problems at a level that is not just symbolic (e.g. hijab and trans flags are pieces of cloth with deeper meanings), but moral as well (e.g. eliminationist rhetoric -- "We'd be better off without them" -- can lead to actual genocidal policies.
The scholars we will be reading and discussing in this class have studied, written books and articles, and worked for decades in the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, and law. In addition, their projects have also included documentary films; extensive studies of images such as "the Jewish bloodsucker" trope, the non-white immigrant/
"polluter" of national purity; and various memorialization projects (museums, statues, and other public creations intended to symbolize and emotionally recognize noble heroes, long-suffering victims, do-nothing bystanders and death-dealing perpetrators). Students will thus read, study and discuss verbal arguments concerning the process and consequences of "othering" those groups and individuals who are perceived to be "not at all like us", (and thus a deadly danger to us, deserving of some kind of elimination), but will also explore ways of replacing an imagination that reacts with disgust, horror, and dehumanization to frightful "others" with an imagination that, instead, tries to look at "difference" with open-minded wonder if not heartfelt compassion.