21st Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship
The Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University has awarded the Twenty-First Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship to Susan Neiman, for her book Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2019.
21st Book Prize Event:
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 | 12:30-2:00pm CST
Dr. Susan Neiman, author of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019)
Chairs: Drs. Claire Katz (Philosophy) and Robert Shandley (International Studies)
Free & Open to the public via Zoom
Professor Susan Neiman is the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, she studied philosophy at Harvard and the Free University of Berlin. Neiman was professor of philosophy at Yale University and Tel Aviv University before moving to the Einstein Forum in 2000. Professor Neiman specializes in moral and political philosophy, and she is the author of numerous books, including: Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin (1992); The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant (1994); Evil in Modern Thought (2002); Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists (2008); and Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (2014).
Learning from the Germans drives an urgently needed perspective for a country to see its wrongdoings. Professor Neiman draws upon her experiences growing up during the civil rights era in the US South and a Jewish woman living much of her adult life in Berlin to write her book on assessing the past and present in order to create a better future. She uses philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. As Americans become increasingly polarized, Learning from the Germans observes the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront their history of racial violence, and asks what we can learn from the Germans in the wake of white nationalist attacks, ongoing debates about reparations, and controversies concerning Confederate monuments in the US.
“Learning from the Germans puts discussion of the horror of American anti-black racism into instructive, fascinating, and disturbing dialogue with rumination on the record of Nazism in Germany. This is a moving, deep, important book.”
—Randall L. Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School
Professor Neiman will be visiting Texas A&M, virtually, during the first week of March 2021 to receive the prize and discuss this important book with the campus community.
The Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship was endowed in December 2000 by Melbern G. Glasscock, Texas A&M University Class of ‘59, in honor of his wife. Together, among many other generous gifts to Texas A&M University, they provided a naming endowment for the Glasscock Center in 2002. Click here for a history of the Prize.