(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)December 22, 2015

(MAHWAH, NJ)–Dr. Vicki Caron, Professor Emerita of Modern Jewish History in the History Department and Jewish Studies Program at Cornell University, explored the topic of her new book, The Battle for the Republic: Jews and Catholics in fin-de-siècle France, 1870-1914 (volume 1 of an anticipated two-volume work on Jewish-Catholic Relations in France, 1870-1964), to be published by Harvard University Press in 2018.  The event was held on October 27 and was sponsored by The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Dr. Caron started her talk with an analysis of how, in the mid to late nineteenth century, “traditional” religiously based anti-Judaism became transformed into “modern” racial anti-Semitism. However, she concentrated most of her attention on how in France anti-Semitism was, to a significant degree, borne of the reaction among traditional elements in society, especially the Roman Catholic clergy and former aristocracy, to a French society that was becoming increasingly secular, if not anti-clerical.

The fact that Jewish politicians were prominent in the governments of the 3^rd Republic, which enacted new laws excluding clergy from teaching in public schools and making civil marriage and divorce compulsory, exacerbated this dynamic. Caron pointed to the role of Edouard Drumont, who in his widely read book La France Juive (Jewish France) and his daily newspaper, La Libre Parole, fused religious, anti-republican and racial anti-Semitism into a force that played a crucial role in fueling anti-Jewish hatred in France for generations to come.

At Cornell since 1997, Professor Caron has held numerous fellowships and appointments for her work in modern Jewish history and her commitment to teaching. She has received fellowships from, among others, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Fulbright Foundation; and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A prolific researcher and writer, Professor Caron is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and monographs including Uneasy Asylum; France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942 (Stanford University Press, 1999), which won the 1997 Fraenkel Prize for the best unpublished manuscript in contemporary history from the Wiener Library in London, and Between France and Germany: The Jews of Alsace-Lorraine, 1871-1918 (Stanford University Press, 1988). She was also co-editor, with Michael Brenner and Uri Kaufmann, of Jewish Emancipation Reconsidered: The French German Models (Mohr Siebeck, 2003).

Vicki Caron received a Ph.D., an M.Phil., and an M.A. from the Department of History at Columbia University, and a B.A. from the University of Illinois.

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