January 15, 2007

ASU political science professor will discuss his book about the settling of Jews after USSR

Augusta, GA – The crumbling of the USSR has set Russian-speaking Jews free to emigrate. From the threat of anti-Semitism to economic disaster, their "good reasons" to do so were numerous, and within one and a half decade, most of them moved out and scattered throughout the world.

Co-author Paul Harris, associate professor of political science in the Department of Political Science at Augusta State University, will discuss the book, Building a Diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA, at a Meet the Author program on Thursday, Jan. 25, at 2:30 p.m. on the second floor of ASU’s Reese Library.

The book is about the million of Jews who settled in Israel, the half million now in the United States, and the 200,000 who settled in Germany. It presents the comparative work of an international team of researchers, including Dr. Harris, which delves into the building of communities, the formulation of collective identities, and the articulation of public discourse by people who, after 80 years of Marxism-Leninism and compulsory removal from Jewish culture, are now reconstructing their ethnicity.

For more information about the free Meet the Author program, contact Mellie Kerins, librarian in ASU’s Reese library, at 706-667-4912.

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January 2007 | February 2007