The Center for Jewish Studies presents the eighth and
final Gold Foundation Distinguished Lecture for the 2008-2009 academic
year. Sarah Stein will present a lecture entitled "Jews, Ostrich
Feathers, and Modern Global Commerce: America and the trans-hemispheric
market." Professor Stein, soon-to-be Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic
Studies at UCLA explores how the thirst for exotic ornament among
fashionable women in the metropoles of Europe and America prompted a
bustling global trade in ostrich feathers that flourished from the 1880s
until the First World War.
When feathers fell out of fashion with consumers, the result was an
economically catastrophic, world-wide feather bust. Sarah Stein's
research suggests that Jews fostered and nurtured the trade across the
global commodity chain and throughout the far-flung territories where
ostriches were reared and plucked, and their feathers were sorted,
exported, imported, auctioned, wholesaled, and finally manufactured for
sale. In this talk, Stein explores Jews' involvement in the American
branch of the global ostrich feather trade, from New York's Lower East
Side to entrepreneurial farms in the American west.
Parking is limited and permits are required. They are available for
purchase at the Information Kiosk at the main entrance to campus. For
maps and directions, visit the UCSC Maps Page: http://www.ucsc.edu/maps.
If you have questions or disability-related access needs, please contact
tim guichard, Administrative Assistant, atjewishstudies@ucsc.edu.