How does the particular produce the universal? In this seminar, Dr. James Loeffler will discuss how Jewish Studies engages this question by drawing on research on Raphael Lemkin’s creation of the legal concept of genocide in interwar Polish Jewish culture.

James Loeffler is Felix Posen Professor of Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, and co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. His writings include two award-winning books, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century and The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire, and two edited volumes, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century and A Jew in the Street: New Views on European Jewish History. He is currently writing a book about antisemitism and the First Amendment in postwar America, which grew out of his Atlantic magazine article about his coverage of the trial of the White Supremacist organizers of the 2017 attack on Charlottesville.