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.
| The course introduces major trends in Israeli fiction, poetry, and literary criticism. It also provides a historical background on ideological context and cultural identity formation by learning about Israeli literary accomplishments beginning in the 1880's to the present day. |
| This course explores Holocaust memory and representation in Europe, Israel and the United States through various media and genres from diaries, memoirs and oral testimonies to Yiddish and Hebrew poetry, second generation graphic novels and film to memorial gardens and resistance monuments, archives and museums. We engage with some of the most fundamental questions of memory and Holocaust trauma from multiple perspectives and contexts. Is it possible to communicate the horrors of the concentration camp? Who has the right to speak about the Holocaust? How does “Jewish” memory of the Holocaust shape our understanding of the history of Nazism, genocide, World War II and its aftermath? In what ways, has Holocaust memory become associated with movements for historical justice and human rights, in particular, in the United States? |
| Throughout most of their history Jews faced Gentile (non-Jewish) majorities, and external influences have always permeated nearly every aspect of Jewish life. How did Jews view themselves and non-Jews? What were the differences between themselves and non-Jews, according to various Jewish thinkers? |
| Course traces the historical development of the many expressions of modern Jewish philosophy and theology since the seventeenth century. |
| This course examines religion and gender through the study of women in Judaism. How do scholars construct a history of women in ancient Judaism when Jewish sacred texts are written by and for men? How have modern Jewish women accommodated feminist ideals without undermining the authority of the established tradition? What impact has the feminist movement had on Jewish communal institutions in the United States and Israel? We explore these questions and others by examining the influence Jewish religious beliefs and practices have played in the formation of Jewish women’s identities, image and their understanding of power and authority. Students study the role of women in the formation of Judaism and Jewish society as a culturally constructed and historically changing category through archaeology, biblical studies, rabbinics, theology, folklore, social and political movements. |
