Lecture Title: The Right Kind of Jew: Laura Z. Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement and the Bargain
of American Assimilation
When Gentleman’s Agreement became a publishing sensation in 1947, Laura Z. Hobson was celebrated for exposing the genteel antisemitism of American life. Yet the novel also grew out of Hobson’s own lifelong negotiation of an unspoken bargain that promised Jews acceptance if they mastered the codes of middle-class American life, minimized their difference, and became the “right kind” of Jew. Drawing together Hobson’s life and landmark novel, Prof. Gordan’s talk explores both the possibilities and the costs of that bargain—and what her story reveals about the limits of Jewish belonging in twentieth-century America.
Rachel Gordan is the Samuel “Bud” Shorstein professor of American Jewish Culture & Society at the University of Florida, where she is an associate professor of religion. Her book, Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American was a finalist for a Jordan Schnitzer Award, and she was a 2024-2025 NEH fellow at the Center for Jewish History in NYC. She is a graduate of Yale College and received her doctorate at Harvard.
The lecture will take place on Thursday, October 29th, from 5:30-7:00 in the Hitchcock Room of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center. Parking is available (with a $1 fee after 5:00 p.m.) at the Bell Tower Parking Deck.
The lecture is free and open to the public!