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Bernard Wasserstein Harriet & Ulrich E. Meyer Professor in Modern European Jewish History and in the College Areas of Expertise:
William Harms |
Background:
In Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Hamish Hamilton, 1996), he proposed a radical reassessment of post-Hitler European Jewry; the picture of demographic decline, social disintegration, and cultural dissolution provoked considerable debate. Secret War in Shanghai: An Untold Story of Espionage, Intrigue, and Treason in World War II (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) is an account of the rivalries of the great powers in North China during World War II. In Divided Jerusalem: The Struggle for the Holy City (Yale University Press, 2001), Wasserstein wrote from an interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The book surveyed the diplomatic history of the Jerusalem question over the past two hundred years, with a close focus on the period since 1967. The book emphasized the historic roots of the current divisions in the city and the exploitation of religious devotion to the city by politicians of all three monotheistic faiths.
His most recent book, Israelis and Palestinians: Why Do They Fight? Can They Stop? (Yale University Press, 2003), returns to some of the themes of his first book and re-examines them in a larger frame and over a longer period. It focuses in particular on demography, social relations (especially the labor market) and environmental pressures, showing how these have shaped and continue to shape the nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
Bernard Wasserstein is an expert on the Middle East, and modern Jewish issues in particular. His first book, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict (Blackwell Publishers, 1978), analyzed the first decade of the Palestine mandate, drawing on the approaches to imperial history suggested by Robinson and Gallagher in their Africa and the Victorians. He edited two volumes of the letters of the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, dealing with the same period. His second monograph, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Cassell, 1979), was based mainly on recently released British records.
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News clippings:
The divided states of Palestine THE INDEPENDENT June 17, 2007 |
Press releases:
Kabbalah, Poetry and Imagination: Conference on the poetry and scholarship of Gershom Scholem |
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Chronicle articles:
Four Chicago faculty members are named Guggenheim fellows April 12, 2007 |
Additional materials:
Website |
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