Jewish Studies Talk: Feminist Antisemitism
The CSULB Jewish Studies Program is proud to bring Dr. Kara Jesella to the Alpert JCC on Wednesday, November 4th, at 7 pm to speak about her research on “Feminist Antisemitism.”
How did Second-Wave Feminism, a movement significantly shaped by Jewish women such as Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler, and Gloria Steinem, become the object of so-much anti-Jewish activism and hate? In her ground-breaking research, Jesella traces out the roots of this feminist antisemitism, linking it with those who would displace women and sisterhood from feminism in favor of a revolutionary politics that seeks to overthrow the racist, settler-colonialist, capitalist state.
While the response of some academic feminists and women’s studies departments to the rapes and murders of October 7th shocked many observers, in fact, hostility toward Jews, Jewish women, and Israel has become a central feature of contemporary radicals and their most important theorists.
Kara Jesella has a Ph.D. and MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and a BA in Women’s Studies and English from Vassar College. She was the Managing Editor of Women & Performance, an academic journal, and the co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, a cultural history of a feminist publication.
Like all Jewish Studies events, this talk is free and open to the public. To speed admission through security, the JCC asks that people rsvp first: https://jewishlongbeach.regfox.com/free-lectures .
