This talk traces the genealogy of the ethnostate, often envisioned by white nationalists in the United States as the ultimate destination in a racially reordered world. Professor Stern will explore expected and unexpected origins of this place concept, including eugenics and bioregionalism, and discuss how white nationalists grapple with the slippery category of whiteness in constructing criteria for inclusion and exclusion. She will also examine the affective dimensions of the ethnostate as an antidote for perceived rootlessness, and ask questions about how this concept is mobilized to vitiate civic nationalism and promote ethnonationalism and racism in America.

Alexandra Minna Stern, PhD, is a professor in American Culture and History, with appointments in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Currently she chairs the Department of American Culture. She also is a core faculty member in the Latina/o Studies Program and the Science, Technology, and Society Program. Her research has focused on the uses and misuses of genetics in the United States and Latin America. She is the author of the award-winning Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America which was published in second edition by University of California Press in 2015. Her latest book, Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) was a Choice 2013 Outstanding Academic Title in Health Sciences. She leads the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, which studies qualitative and quantitative patterns of eugenic sterilization in twentieth-century California; this research is informing policy efforts to provide redress to survivors of compulsory sterilization. Stern has held grants for her work in medical history and health policy, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-right is Warping the American Imagination will be published by Beacon Press in 2019.

Free and open to the public.

This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.