It's no secret among American Jews that Superman had Jewish roots. More precisely, his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were two Jewish high school boys from Cleveland who invented the Man of Steel in 1933. Batman, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk—their creators were Jewish too! How can we account for the over-representation of young Jewish artists among the creators of classic comic book superheroes? This lecture will suggest that we can find answers not only in the experience of second-generation American Jewish boys during the 1930s and the 1940s, but also in deeper wellsprings of Jewish diasporic culture.  Please join us for this very interesting talk!  

Bruce Thompson has been teaching History and Literature at UCSC since 1991, and has been part of the Jewish Studies Department for over 25 years ago.  Among the many subject areas he teaches are classes on European intellectual and cultural history, French history, Jewish intellectual and cultural history, British and Irish history, history of cinema, history of espionage, and environmental history.