Rottman Lecture — Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the New South

Join us in person for the Audrey G. Ratner Speaker Series featuring Dr. Marni Davi’s Rottman Family Lecture! Join us for "Immigrants as 'Petty Entrepreneurs' in the New South: Comparing Jews with Other New Americans," a conversation between historians Dr. Marni Davis and Dr. Michael Cohen. Many Jewish immigrants who settled in the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century made their living in the commercial sector, as owners of small businesses. But Jews were not the only immigrants who took up petty commerce in southern cities: Greek, Italian, Syrian, and Chinese newcomers also found their footing through small business ownership. Dr. Davis and Dr. Cohen will discuss this phenomenon from a comparative perspective, examining the history of Jewish entrepreneurship within a broader regional immigrant context. About the Speakers: Dr. Marni Davis is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University and a historian of ethnicity and immigration in the United States. She is the author of Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (NYU Press, 2012), a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature. Her current research examines the immigrant experience and immigration debate in the American South between Reconstruction and the 1960s. Dr. Michael Cohen is the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Professor in the American Jewish Experience and Director of the Stuart and Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University, where he also chairs the Department of Jewish Studies. He is the author of Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era (NYU Press, 2017), a finalist for the American Jewish Historical Society's Saul Viener Book Prize, and The Birth of Conservative Judaism (Columbia University Press, 2012). Presented by the Stuart & Suzanne Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience at Tulane University, as part of the annual Rottman Lecture series.