Author Description

For Three Hundred Years The Ghetto Defined Jewish Culture In The Late Medieval And Early Modern Period In Western Europe. In The Nineteenth-century It Was A Free-floating Concept Which Travelled To Eastern Europe And The United States. Eastern European Ghettos, Which Enabled Genocide, Were Crudely Rehabilitated By The Nazis During World War Two As If They Were Part Of A Benign Medieval Tradition. In The United States, The Word Ghetto Was Routinely Applied To Endemic Black Ghettoization Which Has Lasted From 1920 Until The Present. Outside Of America The Ghetto Has Been Universalized As The Incarnation Of Class Difference, Or Colonialism, Or Apartheid, And Has Been Applied To Segregated Cities And Countries Throughout The World. Why Ghetto? -- The Age Of The Ghetto -- Ghettos Of The Imagination -- Nazism And The Ghetto -- The Ghetto In America -- The Global Ghetto. Bryan Cheyette. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 127-137) And Index.