[1]The European Studies Group spring lecture series continues Thursday, Feb. 16, with Carolyn Eichner’s talk, “’Caves filled with gold’: French Feminist Perspectives on Race, Empire, & the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1860-1914,” at 4 p.m. in 1117 University Capitol Centre. This event is free and open to the public.

Eichner is an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research focuses on the histories of women, gender, and feminism in modern France. She is the author of Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune, and is now researching French feminists’ ideas about race, religion, and empire.

Abstract:
In the imperial context, French feminists wrote of encounters with Jews, ideas about the place of Jews in society, and merely made passing remarks, some of which betrayed a deep cultural anti-Semitism. Typically regarding Jews as a race rather than a religion, French feminists from across the political spectrum – revolutionary anarchist feminists, republican socialist feminists, liberal republican feminists – displayed anti-Semitism with various degrees of frequency and levels of intensity. Broadly speaking, a fealty to liberalism and anti-Semitic sentiments were closely linked: the greater their opposition to the extant class hierarchy, the greater their opposition to anti-Semitism.

This series is sponsored by the European Studies Group and the UI Center for Human Rights, both within International Programs; the Division of World Languages, Literatures & Cultures; and the Department of History in CLAS.

For more information, contact Jennifer Sessions at jennifer-sessions@uiowa.edu [2] or (319) 353-2199. View the full schedule of lectures at http://international.uiowa.edu/centers/european-studies/events [3].