Today, close to one half of the world’s Jewish population lives in North and South America and the Caribbean. The United States has the world’s largest Jewish population of Jews, with Canada in third, and Argentina and Brazil rounding out the top ten. This interdisciplinary course draws on historical texts, literature, and film to explore questions of Jewish experiences in the Americas as a whole, bringing together North and South America and the Caribbean to understand continuity and change in Jewish experiences over time and across national contexts.

We will explore questions such as: How did Jews come to the Americas and the Caribbean, and what unique challenges did they face when they arrived? What role did religion play in the inclusion or exclusion of Jews in these new societies? How were Jews perceived in racial terms, how did they understand themselves within racialized hierarchies, and how did that differ across national borders within the Americas? How were Jewish experiences shaped by the particular country they lived in, and what experiences were shared across the Western Hemisphere?