The term ghetto is among the most fraught and freighted in the vocabulary of Jewish culture and history. Indeed, it has not only featured prominently in virtually all the major developments of modern Jewish history, from emancipation to antisemitism, from urbanization to suburbanization, and from mass migration to mass murder. The "ghetto" has been fundamental to very definition and constitution of Jewish modernity. For all this explosion of "ghetto-talk," the term has arguably become central to the collective history and identity of only one other people beyond Jews, namely African Americans. Ultimately, the story of the term's migration from Jewish to black concerns more than simply the changing nuance of a particular word. The transference of the ghetto was a semantic as much as a socioeconomic historical development, and indeed was understood as such.

Sponsored by: Jewish Studies Program

Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon Department of History, and Humanities Center.

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