Eugenics and the Jews: An American History and Beyond
Tuition: $360 | YIVO members: $270**
This is a live, online course held on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 25 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, recordings of class sessions, etc.) will be posted to Google Classroom. Students will be granted access to the class on Google Classroom after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English, and any readings will be in English.
Instructor: Hasia Diner
The term “eugenics,” derived from the Greek for “good birth,” was coined in 1883 in England by Sir Francis Galton. The call for a society in which those of better birth predominated drew much from antisemitic rhetoric, and indeed modern antisemitism and eugenics can be seen as age mates, both products of the late nineteenth century – Wilhelm Marr in fact coined the term “antisemitism” in 1881, two years before Galton came up with his new word. At their most extreme, eugenicists called for sterilization. Immigration restriction, which would have such a powerful impact upon Jewish history, both in America and in the places which Jews sought to leave, ranked high on the political agenda of the eugenics movement. Though some Jews in America embraced elements of the eugenics argument, Jewish opponents of eugenics also helped pioneer the idea of environment as the key factor in human development, arguing that criminality, disease, and disability mostly resulted from poverty and poor nutrition. No one played a more important role in the effort to undo the power of the eugenicists than Franz Boas, a German-born Jewish scientist, known as the father of American anthropology, who helped dislodge eugenics both as an idea and as a matter of official policy. This course will survey the history of the eugenics movement and the Jews in the United States and beyond.
Course Materials:
The instructor will provide all course materials digitally throughout the class on Google Classroom.
Questions? Read our 2027 Winter Program FAQ.
Hasia Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor Emerita and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University. A prolific author, her book, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Harvard University Press) is now considered a classic in the field.
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