Five Excellent 2nd 8 week Jewish Studies courses – Fall 2013

Prostitutes, Homemakers, and CEOs (3 cr.) Aziza Khazzoom
NELC-N 204 Topics in Middle Eastern Culture & Society #37259
MW 8-10:15 am

Gen Ed S&H, Gen Ed GCC, CASE S&H, CASE GCC

Any investigation of gender in a society, Israel or elsewhere, must deal with a central theoretical question: to what degree can we assume a universal category “woman”, around which this investigation can center? How do some common themes, like sexual victimization, the second shift, or motherhood, unfold differently for different groups of women – including Israeli women as a group and subgroups within Israel? Are differences large enough that concepts like “women’s experiences” or “gender inequality” are rendered meaningless, and if so then what analytical tools are left for understanding gender? This course is divided into two parts. The first considers the classics of feminist thought about difference, which were often produced outside of Israel. Then, armed with these tools, the second part of the course moves to Israel and its environs, and asks how gender plays out in the lives of different groups of women there.

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The Jews of the Muslim World (3 cr.) Guadalupe González Diéguez
JSTU-J304 Social & Historical Topics in Jewish Studies / NELC-N 303 Issues in Middle Eastern History
TRF 9:30-10:55
CASE S&H

Since the emergence of Islam, and until the twentieth century, a substantial percentage of the Jewish population lived under Muslim rule. This course offers a survey of the history and culture of the Jews of the Muslim lands since the beginnings of Islam until the present, paying attention to the contextualization of the Jewish communities in the larger Muslim milieu. All readings and audiovisual materials will be available in English translation.

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Recent Hebrew Literature in English (3 cr.) Stephen Katz
JSTU-L 385
MWR 4:00-5:25

CASE A&H, CASE GCC

What’s more important, the individual or the group?  The acceptance of the way your parents see things or deliberately doing them differently?  How is childhood affected by the past or how does it represent the future?  This course presents the forces affecting issues, topics, and forms of Israeli literature composed over the last fifty years.  Read about the fascination with minorities; find out about the dilemmas of choice made out of personal or group expectations; follow stories of rites of personal and national passage.  Read about the “Death of the Little God” and how one can choose a career as bus driver or as God.

The course will bring before you the greatest and most talented writers of the last decades.  We will read works by S.Y. Agnon, Shulamit Hareven, Ruth Almog, Yehuda Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz, to name but the chief writers.  We will be reading short stories, novels, and some poetry.

Grades will be determined on the basis of attendance, quizzes, a midterm , and a final exam, and an assigned composition.  No prior knowledge of Hebrew is required for this course.  Students who are proficient in literary Hebrew should enroll under JSTU-H485.  Graduate students will be required to write a research paper on a subject approved by the instructor.

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Yiddish Life: On Page, On Stage, On Screen (3 cr.) Dov‐Ber Kerler
GER‐E 351 Topics in Yiddish Literature / CMLT‐C 377 Topics in Yiddish Literature
MW 4-6:15

CASE A&H, CASE GCC

This course will be devoted to a number of major works of early modern Yiddish fiction, drama and film some of them being prime achievements of modern Yiddish creativity dealing with the rapid modernization, identity issues and cultural as well as social aspiration of East European Jews in Europe and in America.

These works will be closely read and discussed in class. Each one of the three larger works was also adapted or transformed into a film which will be viewed and critically compared with the literary work that inspired it. 

Apart from the general introduction to the historical and socio-cultural background of Yiddish literature and culture this course will also deal with issues of (1) literary structure and representation, (2) fantasy, realism and fiction, (3) the notion of a “national” literature and its possible role in the so-called “world literature,” (4) various specific concerns of a cinematic adaptation of a literary work, (5) the role of drama, theater (and perhaps also cinema) in the cultural public make-up of a stateless national group both in Europe and North America

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Jewish Critics of Zionism (3 cr.) Shaul Magid
REL-A 430 Topics in the History of Judaism MW 5:30-7:30

CASE A&H

In the past fifty years, Zionism has risen to become a central component of Judaism and anti-Zionism has been relegated to those considered the enemy of the State of Israel. Many do not know that some of the most vehement critiques of Zionism came not from the enemies of the state but from Zionists themselves. In this course we will read and examine the Jewish critics of Zionism from the early twentieth century to the present. We will read from the works of Kaufmann Kohler, rector of Hebrew Union College, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Bernard Lazare, hand Kohn, Simon Rawidowicz, The American Council of Judaism, Yeshayahu Leibowiyz, Jacqueline Rose, Peter Beinart, and Judith Butler. We will also read some of the recent Israeli post-Zionist debates. This course is intended to give the student a much more complex and multifaceted view of Zionism as an idea and as an ostensible solution to the Jewish question.