College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Israel Zangwill: Ghetto, Zion, Melting Pot
A Discussion with Bryan Cheyette

Professor Bryan Cheyette will discuss three main elements of Israel Zangwill’s thought and political activism — Ghetto, Zion, Melting Pot — to understand the way that they work in relation to each other both imaginatively and politically. Zangwill (1864-1926) was the best known Jewish writer globally. The ghetto brought together Britain and the United States, his dissident Zionism (as one of the founders of political Zionism) was debated from Palestine to Eastern Europe, and his ideal of the Melting Pot shaped American policy on integration for half a century.

Speaker

Bryan Cheyette is Chair in Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Reading, UK. He has authored or edited eleven books, most recently The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2020) and Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish and Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History (Yale UP, 2014), a Times Higher Book of the Year. He is currently researching Testimonies: Slavery, Genocide, Refugees for Oxford UP and Antisemitism and Empire: From Arendt to Zangwill for Macmillan Palgrave.