Race and ethnicity, it seems, are now at the center of American life. The nation’s rapidly growing diversity has produced stark questions about the challenges of assimilation, the justice of race-conscious politics, and how or whether the ideal of the “melting pot” is still possible. But how did we get here? Is our bitter feuding over identity necessary, or a product of changing ideas? And how should Jewish people in particular think about their identity in a multicultural society?

In this course, students will examine the ideas of race, ethnicity, and multiculturalism in American society through one of the most influential and bestselling sociology texts of all time, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer’s Beyond the Melting Pot. Over the course of five weeks, students will read and discuss this classic book together. In so doing, they will learn about how Glazer and Moynihan conceptualized ethnicity in the 20th-century American city, and apply their ideas to contemporary issues.