Gavriel Rosenfeld
Center for Jewish History, President, Department Member
- Fairfield University, History, Faculty Memberadd
- Gavriel D. Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor of History at Fair... moreGavriel D. Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor of History at Fairfield University. He received his B.A. in History and Judaic Studies from Brown University in 1989 and his Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 1996. His areas of specialization include the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, memory studies, and counterfactual history.
He is the author of numerous books, including the new co-edited volume (with Janet Ward), Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023), The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019), Hi Hitler! How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Building after Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments and the Legacy of the Third Reich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). He is the editor of What Ifs of Jewish History: From Abraham to Zionism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and the co-editor of Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008). He edits the blog, The Counterfactual History Review, and is an editor at the Journal of Holocaust Research.edit
What if the Exodus had never happened? What if the Jews of Spain had not been expelled in 1492? What if Eastern European Jews had never been confined to the Russian Pale of Settlement? What if Adolf Hitler had been assassinated in 1939?... more
What if the Exodus had never happened? What if the Jews of Spain had not been expelled in 1492? What if Eastern European Jews had never been confined to the Russian Pale of Settlement? What if Adolf Hitler had been assassinated in 1939? What if a Jewish state had been established in Uganda instead of Palestine? Gavriel D. Rosenfeld's pioneering anthology examines how these and other counterfactual questions would have affected the course of Jewish history. Featuring essays by sixteen distinguished scholars in the field of Jewish Studies, What Ifs of Jewish History is the first volume to systematically apply counterfactual reasoning to the Jewish past. Written in a variety of narrative styles, ranging from the analytical to the literary, the essays cover three thousand years of dramatic events and invite readers to indulge their imaginations and explore how the course of Jewish history might have been different.
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• Finalist: 2011 National Jewish Book Award (category of visual arts)
• Honorable Mention: 2011 ForeWord Book of the Year (category of architecture)
• Honorable Mention: 2011 ForeWord Book of the Year (category of architecture)
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This essay examines why the concept of "normalization" has become ubiquitous in present-day American discourse. Whether applied to the current COVID-19 pandemic or the administration of Donald Trump, normalization has been employed by... more
This essay examines why the concept of "normalization" has become ubiquitous in present-day American discourse. Whether applied to the current COVID-19 pandemic or the administration of Donald Trump, normalization has been employed by both liberals and conservatives to articulate fears about the country's direction. This essay seeks to explain the growing popularity of normalization by historicizing it, typologizing it, and reflecting on its likely evolution.
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ABSTRACT Richard Evans's new book, Altered Pasts, offers a perceptive but flawed critique of the field of counterfactual history. The author provides a useful historical survey of the field's recent rise to prominence and... more
ABSTRACT Richard Evans's new book, Altered Pasts, offers a perceptive but flawed critique of the field of counterfactual history. The author provides a useful historical survey of the field's recent rise to prominence and intelligently analyzes its respective strengths and weaknesses. His overall assessment of the field is quite skeptical, however. Evans cites many reasons for his skepticism, but his overall critique can be summarized in three words: plausibility, politicization, and popularity. Evans faults works of counterfactual history for their frequently implausible narratives, their promotion of political agendas, and their distressing degree of popularity. In advancing his critique, Evans makes many valid observations that call attention to important deficiencies in the field. But his view is a partial one that neglects countervailing evidence and never penetrates to the heart of why the field has left the margins for the mainstream. Evans's study provides a useful introduction to an understudied topic, but further research—ideally of a less partisan nature—is required for us to better understand counterfactual history's increasing appeal.
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This book investigates the nature of antisemitic scholarship and the perversion of the academic craft by the politics and ideologies of the Third Reich. Alan Steinweis aptly sketches out the institutional framework and brings to light... more
This book investigates the nature of antisemitic scholarship and the perversion of the academic craft by the politics and ideologies of the Third Reich. Alan Steinweis aptly sketches out the institutional framework and brings to light individual researchers from ...
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Page 1. LARG » Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. ISBN 0-393-03836-X USA $45.00 CAN. $56.00 Munich's Road to the Third Reich DAVID CLAY LARGE The capital of the Nazi movement was not Berlin but Munich. So said the Fuhrer ...
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$27.50 There is no more gruesome and tragic record I in the history of the twentieth century than I the photographs taken at the liberation of the concentration camps in Germany after World War II. Our memory of the Holocaust has been... more
$27.50 There is no more gruesome and tragic record I in the history of the twentieth century than I the photographs taken at the liberation of the concentration camps in Germany after World War II. Our memory of the Holocaust has been shaped by these images, and they are seared ...
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... ISBN 0-7456-1044-7 ISBN 0-7456-1045-5 (pbk) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)Germanyinfluence. ... and the genocidal consequences of the Nazi version of German identity - which provoked intensely problematic questions about German... more
... ISBN 0-7456-1044-7 ISBN 0-7456-1045-5 (pbk) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)Germanyinfluence. ... and the genocidal consequences of the Nazi version of German identity - which provoked intensely problematic questions about German identity after the Holocaust. ...
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... At Memory's Edge Page 6. At After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture Memory's Edge James E. Young NEW HAVEN AND LONDON YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS Page 7. ... This postwar generation, after all, cannot... more
... At Memory's Edge Page 6. At After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture Memory's Edge James E. Young NEW HAVEN AND LONDON YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS Page 7. ... This postwar generation, after all, cannot remember the Holocaust as it occurred. ...
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... Gaynor Bagnall and Rowland ana-lyze how the architecture and exhibit of the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, promotes an ... Matthew Boswell ana-lyzes the Holocaust poetry of non-victims, such as Sylvia Plath and... more
... Gaynor Bagnall and Rowland ana-lyze how the architecture and exhibit of the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, England, promotes an ... Matthew Boswell ana-lyzes the Holocaust poetry of non-victims, such as Sylvia Plath and Geoffrey Hill, exploring the link between ...
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Part I. The Nazis Win World War II: 1. Great Britain defeated: between resistance and collaboration 2. The United States and the dilemmas of military intervention 3. Germany's wartime triumph: from dystopia to normalcy 4. Other... more
Part I. The Nazis Win World War II: 1. Great Britain defeated: between resistance and collaboration 2. The United States and the dilemmas of military intervention 3. Germany's wartime triumph: from dystopia to normalcy 4. Other nations: a dissenting view Part II. Alternative Hitlers: 5. The fugitive Fuhrer and the search for justice 6. The world without Hitler: better or worse? Part III. Hypothetical Holocausts: 7. Hypothetical holocausts and the mistrust of memory.