Core

This course will survey the history, textual and archaeological remains of ancient Judaism and the beginnings of Christianity in ancient Judaea from 336 BCE to 135 CE. Special emphasis will focus on how archaeology contributes to the understanding of the history and texts of Ancient Judaism and the New Testament.

The course will focus on the contributions of Jewish writers to German literature and culture. In each case, a reading of the writer’s works will include an examination of that writer’s dual identity as Jew and as German, and a questioning of how this duality is reflected in the writer’s texts. Issues of assimilation/acculturation, Jewish identification, and Jewish self-hatred will all be discussed.

This course is a Humanities Tier Two course in the University-wide General Education Curriculum; it also fulfills the “Diversity Emphasis” requirement. Like other Tier Two courses, this class will seek to help you develop your critical thinking, writing, and interpretive skills. We will examine a wide variety of texts, ranging from purely literary texts — poetry, prose, and drama — to works of philosophy, psychology and political science. The course is interdisciplinary in this sense, and also in the sense that you will be asked to consider how the work of these writers is shaped by the struggle for equal rights as Jews in the German-speaking world, and the equally difficult struggle to come to terms within themselves with their conflicted identities.

Socio-economic and intellectual roots of modern anti-Semitism, evolution of Nazi policy, the world of death camps, responses of Axis and Allied governments, and responses of the Jews.