NASHVILLE, Tenn. – George Fredrickson, one of the leading American scholars on race, will compare and contrast anti-Semitism with racism against people of African descent during a Feb. 27 lecture at Vanderbilt University.
Fredrickson will deliver the annual Byrne lecture at 8 p.m. in the Moore Room (218) of Vanderbilt Law School.
Fredrickson, who is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, Emeritus, at Stanford University, will address “The Historical Construction of Racism: White Supremacy and Anti-Semitism.” Fredrickson is the past president of the Organization of American Historians.
“George has become one of the outstanding comparative historians of his generation, examining the construction of racial identity in South Africa and the American South in several major works,” said Don Doyle, the Nelson Tyrone Jr. Professor of History at Vanderbilt.
Fredrickson said that he will base his lecture on his most recent book, "Racism: A Short History" (Princeton University Press, 2002), which compares the evolution since the late Middle Ages of the two most influential forms of Western racism – that directed against Africans and people of African descent and racism that characterizes Jews as innately malevolent. “I note the similarities between these two historical constructions that make the term racism appropriate in both cases, but also the differences, which I attempt to explain with reference to economic, social and political developments of the United States and Europe.”
Fredrickson’s books include "Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa" and "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History", both published by Oxford University Press. He also wrote "The Black Image in the White Mind" (Wesleyan University Press).
Since 1984 Fredrickson has taught at Stanford, where his courses have included “Nineteenth Century America,” “Race and Ethnicity in the American Experience,” and “Abraham Lincoln: Myth and Reality.”
The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.
Media contact: Ann Marie Owens, 615-322-NEWS, annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu