Michael Cohen, PhD, Stuart & Suzanne Grant Chair in the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University, will deliver the Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Lecture in Judaic Studies. The lecture, “Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era,” will take place on Thursday, December 3 at 7:30 p.m.

Following the American Civil War, Jewish cotton merchants played an important role in restructuring the South. In his lecture, Dr. Cohen will discuss how the success of this niche economy depended on the merchants’ ability to leverage ethnic ties with Jewish-owned firms in New York and Jewish investors around the world.

In addition to showing how these American Jewish merchants capitalized on their ethnicity to achieve success and secure integration, Dr. Cohen will also describe how ethnicity has been used throughout human history to break into the global economy and establish a group’s place in the world.

Dr. Cohen is the author of Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era, and The Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and the Creation of an American Religious, as well as several articles. He is the chair of the Association for Jewish Studies' Directors Group and is an academic advisory board member for the Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture. Dr. Cohen is also a board member of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, and he has served as a scholar-in-residence for the American Jewish Archives.

Free and open to the public, this lecture is made possible through the generosity of the Adolph and Ruth Schnurmacher Foundation. Registration is required. For more information, contact the Bennett Center at bennettcenter@fairfield.edu or call (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066.