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JDS 300/NES 300
Seminar S01: 1:30-4:20 T
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Israeli History Through Film
The course provides an introduction to modern Israeli history and culture through the medium of film. It examines the transitions and changes in Israeli society over the past sixty years and presents students with some of the major themes of the Israeli experience. The history of Israel is the tale of the conflict between East and West, Arabs and Jews and between the Jewish past and the Zionist ethos. It is the story of a transformation from a highly mobilized nation to a modern, self-doubting and pluralistic society that openly questions its past and constituting myths. Israeli cinema reflects these transitions and offers a unique insight into this fascinating culture.
Professor: Eran Kaplan
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GER 306/JDS 304
Seminar S01: 7:30 pm-10:20 T
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German Intellectual History: German-Jewish Thought
The course considers the development of German-Jewish philosophy from the 18th to the 20th century, from Mendelssohn to Buber, Rosenzweig, Arendt, Scholem, and Taubes. Beyond the familiar questions of Haskalah and emancipation, zionism and cultural reawakening, and the responses to the Shoah, we will consider the wider significance of the philosophical answers prompted by these historical contexts and problems, with a focus on the relation between the Jewish tradition and political thought.
Professor: Arnd Wedemeyer
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AMS 334/JDS 334
Seminar S01: 1:30-4:20 M
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Growing Up Jewish in America, 1880s-1960s
Ever since the late 19th century, American Jewish children have grappled with the challenges and possibilities of being heir to two traditions. For some, growing up Jewish in America was a blessing, for others a burden and for still others it was of little consequence. This seminar explores the nature of American Jewish childhood and adolescence between the 1880s and the 1960s and the personal, literary, religious and institutional responses it generated. Topics include the bar and bat mitzvah, summer camping, college life and romance.
Professor: Jenna Weissman-Joselit
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REL 347/JDS 347
Class C01: 1:30-4:20 M
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Religion and Law
A critical examination of the relation between concepts of “religion” and “law,” as they figure in modern Christian and Jewish thought, as well as in contemporary legal theory. If religion gives law its spirit, and law gives religion its structure, then what is their practical relation in both religious and secular life? This course explores the relation between Jewish and Christian conceptions of law, both in their ancient and modern contexts, and the relation between traditional religious and modern secular views of law.
Professor: Leora Batnitzky
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COM 349/JDS 349
Seminar S01: 1:30-4:20 Th
F01-7:30-10:20 M
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Texts and Images of the Holocaust
In an effort to encompass the variety of responses to what is arguably the most traumatic event of modern Western experience, we explore the Holocaust as transmitted through documents, testimony, memoirs, creative writing, historiography, and cinema. In our study of works, reflecting diverse languages, cultures, genres, and points of view, we focus on issues of bearing witness, collective vs. individual memory, and the nature of radical evil. Throughout we are mindful of tensions between ethical and aesthetic imperatives, and the perils of representation itself, when faced with the unrepresentable. Weekly film showings in addition to seminar.
Professor: Froma Zeitlin
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FRE 347/JDS 367
L01 8:30 am-9:50 T
P01 8:30 am-9:50 Th
P02 11:00 am-12:20 Th
P03 1:30 pm-2:50 Th
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Jewish Identities in France Since 1945
France has the largest Jewish community in Europe as well as a strong tradition of cultural assimilation. This course explores literary and film works that represent or refract the experience of Jews in France in the last sixty years. Problems that arise include the diversity in the cultural backgrounds of the French Jewish community, the conflict between 'Jewish literature' and French republican ideology, and the role of Holocaust narratives in literary and cultural production.
Professor: David M. Bellos
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COM 388/JDS 388
Lecture L01: 1:30-2:50 TTh
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Space and Place in Modern Hebrew and Arabic Literature
What are the meanings of space and place for people in a region where geography is overwhelmingly politicized? This course will explore the fictional and autobiographical poetics of social space as expressed in literature and film from Israel and the Arab world. Although these works focus on dramas of love and loss, friendship ad family, we will also see how political conditions influence personal and collective experiences of space. Along the way, we will gain additional insights from theoreticians who have explored the meanings of space as a place, as a condition, and as a practice. All readings are in English translation.
Professor: Lital Levy
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