Nicolaas P. Barr (he/him/his)

I work with faculty on CHID's study abroad programs and teach for CHID, History, and Jewish Studies. I'm the translator of Djinn, a coming-out memoir by the Moroccan-Dutch politician and writer Tofik Dibi, published in SUNY Press's Queer Politics and Cultures series in 2021.

My research, translation, and teaching interests are driven by the question of how to make sense of, and respond to, forms of violence and social domination. I'm especially interested in understanding antisemitism in relation to the wider histories of white supremacy and ongoing forms of racialization in Europe. My book project, provisionally titled The Other of Enlightenment: Critical Theory, Secularism, Race, revisits the Frankfurt School's analysis of antisemitism to interpret the far right's resurgence in the post-Holocaust context of European "philosemitism" and (self-proclaimed) enlightened secularism, focusing on the Netherlands. My study abroad program in Amsterdam examines how Dutch identity is being refashioned by Dutch people of color amid the supposed crisis of normative (white) Dutch national identity and "tolerant" values. In 2023, I received the Stroum Center's Outstanding Instructor in Jewish Studies award.

I've written on Dutch racism in The Nation and Jewish Currents and am an editor for H-Low Countries. I'm also a trombonist in the Mexican band Banda Vagos.