The 2018-19 Stetson Spotlight Series continues on February 1 with a presentation by Dr. Eric Kurlander, Professor of History, who will speak on “Before the Final Solution: A Global History of the Nazi ‘Jewish Question’”.
Date: Friday, February 1
Time: 1:30 pm- 2:30 pm
Location: Lynn Business Center 124
Snacks will be available. All are welcome!
SPOTLIGHT NOW OFFERS CULTURAL CREDIT!
Please encourage your students to attend.
Click here for a complete schedule of Stetson’s Spotlight Series.
“Before the Final Solution: A Global History of the Nazi ‘Jewish Question’”
When the “Jewish Question” is discussed by historians, it is almost always examined as a prelude to the Holocaust–– what the Nazis called the “Final Solution [Endlösung]” to the “Jewish Question [Judenfrage].” What gets overlooked in this understandable focus on genocide is that the “Final Solution” emerged very late in the history of the Nazi “Jewish Question,” after many other so-called “solutions” had been pursued. At the center of my new book project is the question: What were the various conceptions and “solutions” to the (Nazi) “Jewish Question” in the period before the “Final Solution”? To what degree did other European and non-European states help define, determine, or oppose these conceptions of the “Jewish Question” and its various solutions? What were the ethnonational and geographic, political-institutional, cultural and intellectual, and socioeconomic constraints? In my Spotlight talk, I plan to outline the contours of my larger book project in response to these questions, using the preliminary research I gathered in Summer 2018 as evidence.
Eric Kurlander, Ph.D., is a professor of modern European history at Stetson University. Kurlander earned his B.A. at Bowdoin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University, teaching three years at Harvard before coming to Stetson in 2001. He offers courses on Modern German, European and World History. His recent monograph, Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (Yale, 2017), offers the first comprehensive study of the supernatural in Nazi Germany, illustrating how the Third Reich drew upon a wide variety of occult practices, esoteric sciences and pagan religious ideas to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. The book has been reviewed positively in the Washington Post, Times of London, Der Spiegel, the National Review, as well as other prominent periodicals in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy. The book has recently appeared in paperback and been translated into Italian and Polish.
Stetson Spotlight Series
The Stetson Spotlight Series at Stetson University is a showcase of faculty research, creative inquiry, and other scholarly engagement to the campus community. Presenters are primarily recipients of grant awards through the Stetson Summer Grant Program.
Click here for a complete schedule of the Stetson Spotlight Series.