Campus Announcements

Lecture: Yascha Mounk, “Stranger In My Own Country: A Jewish Childhood in Modern Germany and a Country’s Struggle with its Past”

Monday, March 24, 4:45 PM
Eliot 314
This event is open to the public.

As a Jew in postwar Germany, Yascha Mounk felt like a foreigner in his own country. When he mentioned that he was Jewish, some made anti-Semitic jokes or talked about the superiority of the Aryan race. Others, sincerely hoping to atone for the country’s past, fawned over him with a forced friendliness he found just as alienating.  In a combination of memoir and history, Mounk traces the contours of Jewish life in a country still struggling with the legacy of the Third Reich and portrays those who, inevitably, continue to live in its shadow. How can a country face up to its darkest years? Can it ever hope to escape the shadow of the past? And what do the answers to such questions teach us about identity in the 21st century? 

Yascha Mounk, a doctoral candidate in political thought in the Department of Government at Harvard University, is founding editor of The Utopian. He frequently writes for newspapers and journals, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, Slate, and Die Zeit. His first book, Stranger in My Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany, was published in January by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A light reception follows the lecture.

Sponsored by the Departments of History, English, German, Russian, Religion, Modern Humanities, and the Office for Institutional Diversity.

For more information, contact Ben Lazier.
Submitted by Laurie Lindquist.
Posted on Mar 13, 2014

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