#  Dr. Caroline Light 

Senior Lecturer and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in WGS

 

 

 



   ![Caroline Light](/sites/g/files/omnuum6761/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2026-02/CL%20headshot%202025.jpg?itok=INGSkynW) 

 



 





 

Caroline Light is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in WGS. Her research explores histories of citizenship and belonging in the United States, including how Jewish immigrants created a web of benevolent organizations in the South. Light's first book, [That Pride of Race and Character: the Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South](https://nyupress.org/books/9781479854530/) (NYU Press, 2014) tells the stories of Jewish orphans raised in institutions that lifted them from poverty to prosperity. [Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense](http://www.beacon.org/Stand-Your-Ground-P1254.aspx) (Beacon Press, 2017) tracks the evolution of our nation’s ideals of armed citizenship, from the centuries-old “castle doctrine” to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have removed the duty to retreat in a majority of the states. A ten-year anniversary edition of *Stand Your Ground* - with a Preface by historian [Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz](https://law.utexas.edu/humanrights/directory/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/) - is forthcoming.