Welcome to a seminar with Kerice Michelle Doten-Snitker, who will present an on-going project titled:
The Temporal and Spatial Structure of Medieval Expulsions of Jews
Kerice is a junior researcher in Sociology at the Instituto Carlos III – Juan March de Ciencias Sociales and a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Social Sciences Universidad carlos III de Madrid in Spain. Kerice research the decisions people and institutions make that define and redefine their political communities. She also work in evaluation research for university-level educational and professional training, with a focus on increasing equity and participation of systematically marginalized students and professionals.
Abstract What social processes guide the spread of ethnic or racial exclusion? I investigate the diffusion of medieval expulsions of Jews among over 500 polities in the western Holy Roman Empire, 1385-1520 CE. For medieval rulers, religious and material concerns were strong rationales against expulsion. Yet expulsions increase markedly in the fifteenth century. Did an expulsion by one government affect another government’s choices about expulsion? Using event history analysis methods, I document the limited spread of expulsion. The adoption of expulsion followed political and economic incentives that were embedded in inter-city relationships, particularly after theological changes gave expulsion fresh political value. Social interdependence can spur as well as squelch racial extremism.