Conference

Otherness:
The Construction of Race & its Consequences
in the 20th Century

A Conference at Webster University, St. Louis, December 5-6, 2003
Emerson Library Conference Room

Conference Description	Getting Academic Credit
Conference Schedule	Organizers & Funders
Directions to Emerson Library	Accommodations
Visiting St. Louis	Museum of Contemporary Arts

Recent work on the human genome project confirmed what biologists have argued for decades: there is no scientific foundation for the idea of race. It is left to scholars in the social sciences and the humanities, then, to explain the origins of racial thinking, its peculiar staying power in western culture, and its devastating impact upon world history.

In fact, there has been a groundswell of research over the past two decades on the historical construction of “otherness,” or how groups of people become categorized as essentially different. Anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated that perceptions of difference are always shaped by cultural and social forces. Literary scholars and psychologists have examined the mental processes through which people are marked as “other.” Historians have described how racial myths fueled politics, social policies, and war.

This two-day conference will present the insights of scholars from around the world who work on some aspect of the question of otherness. Presenters will include nationally-known experts on the Holocaust, the history of eugenics, civil rights, and the anthropology and psychology of racial difference.

Among the questions to be addressed:

How did modern concepts of racial difference arise? To what extent were traditional stereotypes and traditional views of otherness appropriated, transformed, or superseded in the 20th century?
How and why have perceptions of otherness linked up with fears of deviance, crime, corruption, and sexual danger?
How did racial thinking shape political and social movements of the 20th-century?
What was the historical relationship between genocide, constructions of difference, and everyday practices of discrimination?
How do assumptions about race impact popular thinking and government policies on immigration and terrorism today?

Organizers and Sponsors

This conference is sponsored by Webster University in St. Louis, the Des Lee International Visiting Professor Program, and The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington.

Additional support is provided by the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center in St. Louis, MO and the Multicultural Learning Center at Webster.

Organizers are:
Dr. Wolf Gruner, historian, Berlin, and Des Lee Visiting Professor of Global Awareness at Webster University
Dr. Warren Rosenblum, historian, Webster University, St. Louis

Receiving Credit
For students interested in receiving graduate (in-service) credit in Education, the cost is $60. For more information on registration and requirements, click here.

For students interested in receiving credit in International Relations or History, the cost will be equal to a regular credit hour at Webster. Please contact Warren Rosenblum if you are interested.