Campus Lecture Series Fall 2013

Presented in partnership with The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies • the Department of History • the Program in Sports and Society in the School of Sociology • Latin American Studies • the School of Government & Public Policy •  the School of Anthropology

Sports and Ethnicity in Argentina:
On the Pitch with the Jewish Fans of Atlanta in Buenos Aires

September 30, 2013
Raanan Rein, Vice President, Tel Aviv University
Time: 4:00pm
Location:  UA Hillel Foundation (Mountain Room, 2nd Floor)
Suggested parking: 2nd Street Garage, Mountain Ave. & 2nd Street

Also sponsored by The Andrea & David Stein Fund for Modern Israel Studies
and The UA Hillel Foundation

 

 

While most historians would agree as to the centrality of sports in general and of soccer in particular in Latin American societies, very little has been written on ethnicity and sports in such immigrant societies as Argentina and Brazil.  In his Lecture, Dr. Rein will focus on the history of the Club Atlético Atlanta, located in what has long been considered a Jewish neighborhood. Since the 1950s there has been a conspicuous Jewish presence among the fans, administrators and presidents of the Atlanta soccer club, to the extent that fans of rival teams often chant anti-Semitic slogans during matches. Yet - Argentine football is a space of both prejudice and dialogue. Dr. Rein argues that different generations linked football to different identities: for the first immigrant generation, belonging to the club was a way of becoming Argentines. For subsequent generations, it represented a way of maintaining their ethnic Jewish identity.

Dr. Raanan Rein is the Elias Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History and the Head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies, both at Tel Aviv University. He is the author and editor of more than 25 books and several dozens of articles in academic journals. He is also a co-editor of the journal Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe, and was guest-editor of special issues of journals such as History & Memory and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.

He is a member of Argentina's National Academy of History, and Co-President of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA). The Argentine government awarded him the title of Commander in the Order of the Liberator San Martin for his contribution to Argentine culture.

For details and options of meeting with Dr. Rein, please contact Dr. Jadwiga Pieper Mooney, History Department, at jadwiga@email.arizona.edu