Courses

Intended for beginners. Provides a thorough grounding in reading, writing, grammar, oral comprehension, and speaking. Students who complete the course are able to function in basic situations in a Hebrew-speaking environment.

Full details for JWST 1102 - Elementary Modern Hebrew II

Intended for advanced beginners. Builds further competence in reading, writing, oral comprehension, speaking and grammar. Course material is presented and discussed in the context of Ashkenazi Jewish culture.

Full details for JWST 1777 - Elementary Yiddish II

The course is aimed at training students in exact and idiomatic Hebrew, expanding vocabulary and usage of grammatical knowledge, and acquiring facility of expression in both conversation and writing. Uses written and oral exercises built around the texts. Reading and discussion of selections from Hebrew literature and Israeli culture through the use of texts and audiovisual materials.

Full details for JWST 2100 - Intermediate Modern Hebrew

In this course we will read some of the most influential micro-history writers and explore examples of different subgenres of microhistory, such as individual biographies, family histories, social histories of towns, city, and village histories, histories of singular events and the impact they have on a family or a community, a history of an object, and fictional narratives of individual experiences of global events. The course aims to explore how seemingly a limited-scale of analysis can illuminate the experience of much larger events. The course will draw on examples that focus on a wide range of experiences from around the world, with special attention paid to the the Middle East and Africa. The final research project will build on the student's own family's history, or the history of one individual, or an object (such as an inherited jewelry, a document, a painting, or a photograph etc) and research to situate that person/object/family's history in the context of an event of global important (such as a war, colonialism, mass violence, environmental history, empire, etc).

Full details for JWST 2462 - Personal Histories of Global Events: Microhistorical Approaches to the Writing of Global History

This course explores the history of medicine and other sciences in the ancient Near East, broadly defined. In addition to medicine, the other scientific disciplines covered in this course include mathematics, astrology, astronomy, alchemy, zoology, among others. Geographically, the course traces the transmission of scientific knowledge in ancient Babylonia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, and beyond. As such, the course offers students a tour of different ancient civilizations and corpora. Students read selections from cuneiform Akkadian tablets, Egyptian Christian Coptic spellbooks, rabbinic sources such as the Talmud, among many other works. At the same time, students will be required to critically engage recent scholarship in the history of science and medicine as a way to help frame their analyses of the ancient materials. The course interrogates how ancient civilizations transmitted and received scientific knowledge, as well as the relationship between what we today tend to call science, medicine, magic, and religion. This course is intended not only for students in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but also for those majoring in science or medicine.

Full details for JWST 2599 - Medicine, Magic and Science in the Ancient Near East

This course is an introduction to Jewish identities, values, and practices from the ancient to modern era. Organized thematically, it examines Judaism as a religious phenomenon, with a particular emphasis on its cultural and textual diversity across three millennia. Themes covered include creation, Sabbath, prayer, Jerusalem, pious customs, magic, reincarnation, revelation, among others. Throughout the semester students perform close readings of a wide selection of Jewish texts from the Bible, Talmud, kabbalah (mysticism), philosophy, liturgy, and modern Jewish thought. In what ways are these various traditions of Judaism interrelated and/or in tension with one another? In the face of the Jewish history's tremendous diversity, what is it that has unified Judaism and the Jewish people over the centuries? By exploring these types of questions, this course examines the appropriateness of defining Judaism as a religion, an ethnicity, a civilization, and/or a culture. Readings include introductory-level textbooks and essays, as well as a range of primary source materials in translation.

Full details for JWST 2644 - Introduction to Judaism

What does it mean to call a film is "Jewish"? Does it have to represent Jewish life? Does it have to feature characters identifiable as Jews? If artists who identify as Jews—actors, directors, screenwriters, composers—play significant roles in a film's production does that make it Jewish? Our primary point of entry into these questions will be Hollywood, from the industry's early silent films, through the period generally considered classical, down to the present day. We will also study films produced overseas, in countries that may include Israel, Egypt, France, Italy, and Germany. Our discussions will be enriched by contextual material drawn from film studies, cultural studies, Jewish studies, American studies, and other related fields. Students will be expected to view a significant number of films outside of class—an average of one per week—and engage with them through writing and in-class discussion. The directors, screenwriters, composers, and actors whose work we will study may include: Charlie Chaplin, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Billy Wilder, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Aviva Kempner, Joan Micklin Silver, the Marx Brothers, and the Coen Brothers.

Full details for JWST 2790 - Jewish Films and Filmmakers: Hollywood and Beyond

This is the second course in our third-year Modern Hebrew language sequence. Like its predecessor, it focuses on developing speech proficiency, reading and listening comprehension, and writing. It does this through reading of a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts; viewing of filmic works and television series selected for their social, political, and cultural relevance; class discussions; presentations and writing about everyday issues in Israel and abroad.

Full details for JWST 3102 - Advanced Modern Hebrew II

This course uses the history of the Spanish Inquisition, and the richness of its archival records, to explore the variety of ways in which the pursuit of heresy was intertwined with transforming how knowledge was constructed, scrutinized, repressed, and deployed in the early modern world. Topics covered will include the struggle over religious authenticity in the age of Reformation, the formation of the bureaucratic state, the rise of empiricism and the scientific revolution, the birth of modern psychiatry, and the intellectual revolutions typically associated with the Enlightenment.

Full details for JWST 3175 - Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition: Inquisitors, Heretics, and Truth in the Early Modern World

This course aims to familiarize students with the history of Scandinavia, ca. 800-1100 ad. Although well known as a dramatic chapter in medieval history, this period remains enigmatic and often misunderstood. Our goal will be to set Norse history within its European context, observing similarities with processes elsewhere in the medieval world, the better to perceive what makes the Norse unique. We will examine the social, economic and political activities of the Norsemen in continental Scandinavia, in Western and Eastern Europe, and in the North Atlantic. 

Full details for JWST 3200 - The Viking Age

This course is an advanced study of a central concept, problem, or figure in 17-18th century philosophy. Spring 2024: This course will be an in-depth inquiry into the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch-Jewish modern philosopher — a key figure of radical Enlightenment who left a profound mark on German Idealists like Hegel and on 20th century continental philosophy. We will spend the term reading through his magnum opus, the Ethics, in the light of this influence and in light of his debts to medieval Jewish philosophy (especially Maimonides) and to Cartesianism.

Full details for JWST 3222 - Early Modern Philosophy

Islamophobia and Judeophobia are ideas and like all ideas they have a history of their own. Although today many might think of Islamophobia or Judeophobia as unchangeable—fear of and hatred for Islam and Muslims or Judaism and Jews—these ideas and the social and political practices informed by them have varied greatly over time and place. They even intersected during the Middle Age and in Ottoman times when "the Jew" was frequently represented as allied with "The Muslim". The first part of this course traces the history, trajectory, and political agency of Judeophobia and Islamophobia in texts and other forms of culture from late antiquity through the present. The second part of the course is devoted to modernity and the present especially in Europe and the United States focusing on representational practices—how Muslims/Islam and Jews/Judaism are portrayed in various discourses including the media, film and on the internet. We will investigate how these figures (the Muslim, the Jew) serve as a prism through which we can understand various social, political and cultural processes and the interests of those who produce and consume them.

Full details for JWST 3523 - Judeophobia, Islamophobia, Racism

This seminar examines the history of the United States' involvement with Middle East beginning with evangelical efforts in the 19th century and President Wilson's engagement with the colonial powers in the early 20th century during and after WWI. The discovery of vast Middle Eastern oil reserves and the retreat of the colonial powers from the region following WWII drew successive US administrations ever deeper into Middle Eastern politics. In due course the US became entrenched in the post-colonial political imagination as heir to the British and the French especially as it challenged the Soviet Union for influence in the region during the Cold War. And that only takes the story to the mid-1950s and the Eisenhower administration. Our discussions will be based on secondary readings and primary sources as we interrogate the tension between realist and idealist policies toward the Middle East and trace how these tensions play out in subsequent developments including the origins and trajectory of the US strategic alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey and conflict with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the two Gulf Wars.

Full details for JWST 3687 - The US and the Middle East

The concept of law plays a central role in Judaism. We often use the word 'law' to describe obligatory Jewish religious practices. But is that 'law,' as compared with state law? Legal systems in the U.S. and Europe make laws that protect religious people, and that protect governments from religion. But what does 'religion' mean in a legal context? And how do implicit notions of religious law affect how judges deal with religion? We will explore these questions using sources drawn from contemporary religions, focusing in particular on Judaism, and recent legal disputes.

Full details for JWST 3732 - Jewish Law, State Law

This course explores the intricacies of identity-making and processes of racialization in the Atlantic World from ca. 1500 onward. The range of topics covered include the encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people in the Americas and the invention of the "Indians," the spread of blood purity discourses across the Ibero-Atlantic, the intertwining of African Slavery and racializing ideologies in the British Atlantic, the development of medical frameworks for defining social differences, and the myriad ways in which subaltern groups and individuals resisted, adopted, and subverted the identities that were ascribed to them.

Full details for JWST 4474 - Race and Identity in the Atlantic World

How do we cross from an era of destruction and devastation to one of hope and possibility?  When we see the signs of endings and extinctions all around us, can we move forward with courage and creativity? This course explores ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts, which speak simultaneously of destruction and hope, judgment and possibility. These sensational and sensory formulations of the end times reverberate today in art, film, and music, as well as in environmental writings. Our readings will range from ancient apocalyptic texts, including the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, to medieval apocalyptic treatises, modern film and art analyses, and ecological treatments of the apocalypse, environment, and future possibilities.

Full details for JWST 4695 - Crossing the Apocalypse

For undergraduates who wish to obtain research experience or do extensive reading on a special topic.  Students select a topic in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course.

Full details for JWST 4992 - Independent Study - Undergraduate

This course explores the intricacies of identity-making and processes of racialization in the Atlantic World from ca. 1500 onward. The range of topics covered include the encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people in the Americas and the invention of the "Indians," the spread of blood purity discourses across the Ibero-Atlantic, the intertwining of African Slavery and racializing ideologies in the British Atlantic, the development of medical frameworks for defining social differences, and the myriad ways in which subaltern groups and individuals resisted, adopted, and subverted the identities that were ascribed to them.

Full details for JWST 6474 - Race and Identity in the Atlantic World

How do we cross from an era of destruction and devastation to one of hope and possibility?  When we see the signs of endings and extinctions all around us, can we move forward with courage and creativity? This course explores ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts, which speak simultaneously of destruction and hope, judgment and possibility. These sensational and sensory formulations of the end times reverberate today in art, film, and music, as well as in environmental writings. Our readings will range from ancient apocalyptic texts, including the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, to medieval apocalyptic treatises, modern film and art analyses, and ecological treatments of the apocalypse, environment, and future possibilities.

Full details for JWST 6695 - Crossing the Apocalypse