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 1101 - Elementary Modern Hebrew I

Who were the Jews that first settled in the Americas and around the Atlantic? How did their experiences intersect with processes of colonization, empire-building, racialization, and the formation of an interconnected Atlantic World? Why do half the world's Jews live currently in countries on the Atlantic littoral? How do they maintain trans-national bonds with other Jews around the world? This course will reconstruct the rise of the Sephardi Diaspora following the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain, their settlement patterns across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, their global economic activities, and the uneasy ways they mapped onto religious, political, and racial schema of the period. We will also explore the mass-migrations of European, Middle Eastern, and North African Jews in the 19-20th centuries that rejuvenated the Jewish Atlantic and will investigate how the formation of the State of Israel has impacted the bonds of solidarity within this multi-ethnic Jewish Diaspora.

Full details for JWST 1710 - The Jewish Atlantic: 1492-Present

Religion is a term with a rich history but without a precise definition. Everyone can describe a religious idea or a religious experience even though there is no agreement about what it is that makes an idea or an experience religious. How did this state of things come about? What is it that makes religion both one thing and many things? Why do we apply this concept to Christianity, Islam and Judaism and to the deep feelings we associate with secular forms of devotion and enthusiasm — for food, for love, for family, for art, for sport? In this seminar, we will discover that religion is a distinctly modern concept, developed to address the psychological and social needs of Europeans increasingly adrift from the traditional communal practices and moral commitments of their parents and grandparents. Tracing the history of "religion" — rather than the history of religions — from the age of Immanuel Kant to the age of Emmanuel Levinas, we will examine paradoxical connection between the rise of religion and the decline of faith.

Full details for JWST 2155 - The Invention of Religion

Drawing on a combination of primary and secondary sources, this course explores the multiple forms and evolution of biographical writing from the Renaissance onward. We will interrogate the relationship between biographical reasoning and several modern phenomena, including the construction of national identities, the rise of psychoanalysis, and even the historical profession itself. And we will consider whose voices, experiences, and subjectivities are historically valorized through the increasing prominence of biography, and who has been marginalized, silenced, or erased from history in the process.

Full details for JWST 2195 - Biography, History, and Modernity

How is the memory of the Holocaust kept alive by means of the literary and visual imagination? Within the historical context of the Holocaust and how and why it occurred, we shall examine major and widely read Holocaust narratives that have shaped the way we understand and respond to the Holocaust. We also study ethical and psychological issues about how and why people behave in dire circumstances. We shall begin with first-person reminiscences—Wiesel's Night, Levi's Survival at Auschwitz, and The Diary of Anne Frank—before turning to realistic fictions such as Kineally's Schindler's List (and Spielberg's film), Kertesz's Fateless, Kosinski's The Painted Bird, and Ozick's "The Shawl." We shall also read the mythopoeic vision of Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just, the illuminating distortions of Epstein's King of the Jews, the Kafkaesque parable of Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegelman's Maus books.

Full details for JWST 2580 - Imagining the Holocaust

This course examines Near East's rich and diverse literary heritage. We will read a selection of influential and wondrous texts from ancient to modern times, spanning geographically from the Iberian peninsula to Iran. We will explore a range of ancient myths of creation and destruction. We will also trace encounters with otherness in travel narratives. Together we will read and discuss such ancient works as the "The Story of Sinuhe" and "The Epic of Gilgamesh," as well as selections from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and Qur'an. We will explore medieval works such as the "Travels" of Ibn Battuta, the "Shahnameh" of Ferdowsi, and "The Arabian Nights." We will also read Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, and Sonia Nimr's Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, as well as excerpts from Yochi Brandes's The Orchard. Students will also have the opportunity to research and analyze primary source materials in the collections of Cornell Rare Books and Manuscript Collection, and the Johnson Art Museum. All material is in English translation.

Full details for JWST 2754 - Wondrous Literatures of the Near East

Stories--whether orally told or written down in treasured texts, whether in Jewish languages or the languages of the myriad places where Jews have lived--are essential to the life of this age-old and ever-changing culture. We will read together widely, from Talmudic tales to modern Yiddish and Hebrew texts, twentieth-century American Jewish fiction, and beyond. We will consider what makes a story (not just a Jewish one) special. We will listen to the stories of the elders among us, and we will work at becoming better storytellers ourselves.

Full details for JWST 3409 - Telling Jewish Stories

What explains authoritarian resilience in the Middle East? What are the causes and consequences of Islamist political attitudes and behavior? What is the historical legacy of colonialism and empire in the Middle East? This course will offer students the opportunity to discuss these and other questions related to the political, social, and economic development of the Middle East and North Africa.

Full details for JWST 3850 - Middle East Politics

Topic: Writing Through the Forest in Search of Trees. Hello, Humanities Student! Are you a plotter or a pantser? Not sure? Come and join us to find out, and to gain valuable insight into what kind of a writer you are, and how to manage that writer most effectively and productively. This theme-centered methods seminar, through a communal focus on trees, woods, glens, and copses in the pre-modern world, will hone in on the most indispensable tool in the humanist's belt: writing. From the generation of ideas, to their organization into an outline (or a blueprint, or whatever euphemism we, as a group or as individuals, decide to apply to the initial, tangled pile of yarn) to the first draft. Followed by frank and constructive criticism of the initial draft as a group and in pairs, and then on to the part that all students—really, all humanists…okay, all writers—find to be the greatest struggle: "Your paper has some good ideas, but it really needs a rewrite." Now what do you do? As we write, and rewrite, we will also read widely. In addition to primary sources, scholarly articles and essays, we will include criticism, personal essay, theory, excerpts from fiction, and more, in an effort to open students' writing up to a myriad of possibilities for persuasive and compelling written communication.

Full details for JWST 4310 - Methods in Medieval

This class will study an important example of resistance, that is, several armed revolts against Imperial Rome during the first two centuries of our era. Africa, Asia, and Europe all saw such rebellions. What caused them? Why did almost all of them fail? Were they popular movements or elite enterprises? What other forms of resistance to Rome existed besides armed revolts? To what extent were ethnicity, race, or religion factors in the revolts? The main case studies will be Arminius (Germany), Tacfarinas (North Africa), Boudicca (Britain), the Batavian Revolt (Netherlands), the Jewish Revolt (Judea), the Diaspora Revolt/Kitos War (Libya, Egypt, Cyprus, Judea, Mesopotamia), the Bar Kokhba Revolt (Judea). Readings in ancient literary sources as well as inscriptions, papyri, coins, and archaeological evidence.

Full details for JWST 4346 - Revolts Against the Roman Empire

Death is both the opposite of life and an intimate part of life. Though it comes to us all, human understandings of the process of dying and of our relations to the dead have varied widely. For many, the dead remain engaged with the living for better and for worse. For others, the dead are just history. We will draw on anthropological, sociological, historical and literary texts to understand better this vast range of attitudes toward the dead and the process of dying—and we will come to understand better what we gain and lose by consigning the dead to oblivion. After considering a wide range of comparative studies, we will conclude with an intensive focus on death, dying, and the dead in Jewish cultures.

Full details for JWST 4448 - Death, Dying, and the Dead

The first half of a two-semester sequence for Jewish Studies majors who wish to conduct research for an honors thesis. In this class, student research will be guided through individual meetings with the instructor as well as in-class writing exercises and peer review, and students will develop research and writing skills, including library research, bibliographies, drafts, art of argument, and rewriting. The course will be designed in a way that allows students to conduct research that is of interest to them, regardless of what that field of interest is. In the first semester of this sequence, weekly readings of the course are designed to expose students to a variety of scholarly approaches in the field of Jewish Studies. In the second semester, students will create a detailed bibliography that is aimed at more specific expertise in the subject matter at hand. The second semester will conclude with a lengthier research paper.

Full details for JWST 4998 - Honors Research I

This seminar presents an introduction to Judeo-Arabic through the study of selected classical texts and the study of its grammar and lexicon. Because Judeo-Arabic combines elements of Hebrew and Arabic the course will also study aspects of the two classical languages in comparative perspective and examine how the development of classical Arabic grammar established the study of classical Hebrew grammar.

Full details for JWST 6221 - Judeo-Arabic

Topic: Writing Through the Forest in Search of Trees. Hello, Humanities Student! Are you a plotter or a pantser? Not sure? Come and join us to find out, and to gain valuable insight into what kind of a writer you are, and how to manage that writer most effectively and productively. This theme-centered methods seminar, through a communal focus on trees, woods, glens, and copses in the pre-modern world, will hone in on the most indispensable tool in the humanist's belt: writing. From the generation of ideas, to their organization into an outline (or a blueprint, or whatever euphemism we, as a group or as individuals, decide to apply to the initial, tangled pile of yarn) to the first draft. Followed by frank and constructive criticism of the initial draft as a group and in pairs, and then on to the part that all students—really, all humanists…okay, all writers—find to be the greatest struggle: "Your paper has some good ideas, but it really needs a rewrite." Now what do you do? As we write, and rewrite, we will also read widely. In addition to primary sources, scholarly articles and essays, we will include criticism, personal essay, theory, excerpts from fiction, and more, in an effort to open students' writing up to a myriad of possibilities for persuasive and compelling written communication.

Full details for JWST 6310 - Methods in Medieval

This class will study an important example of resistance, that is, several armed revolts against Imperial Rome during the first two centuries of our era. Africa, Asia, and Europe all saw such rebellions. What caused them? Why did almost all of them fail? Were they popular movements or elite enterprises? What other forms of resistance to Rome existed besides armed revolts? To what extent were ethnicity, race, or religion factors in the revolts? The main case studies will be Arminius (Germany), Tacfarinas (North Africa), Boudicca (Britain), the Batavian Revolt (Netherlands), the Jewish Revolt (Judea), the Diaspora Revolt/Kitos War (Libya, Egypt, Cyprus, Judea, Mesopotamia), the Bar Kokhba Revolt (Judea). Readings in ancient literary sources as well as inscriptions, papyri, coins, and archaeological evidence.

Full details for JWST 6346 - Revolts Against the Roman Empire

The title alludes to an essay by Leo Strauss, now modified and expanded beyond political philosophy to include literary and audio-visual media (past and present) and psychoanalysis. Persecution (via censorship or heterodoxy) is both externally imposed and internalized. Texts include selections from: Plato (Epistles and Republic); Dante (Inferno, Canto X, as read by Gramsci); Maimonides (Guide for the Perplexed); Boethius (Consolation of Philosophy); Machiavelli (as read by Strauss, by Gramsci, and by Althusser); Spinoza (Theological-Political Treatise); Hegel (as read by Marx); Lessing (Ernst and Falk on Freemasonry); also short selections from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Wittgenstein, and Emily Dickinson. Titles indicate related topics: Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (A.M. Melzer); Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (R. Girard); The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (M. Detienne); The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (F. Kermode); The Marrano of Reason (Y. Yovel); Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet (E.E. Lowinsky); Gulliver's Travels (J. Swift); Paranoiac-Critical Method (S. Dali); The Third Policeman (F. O'Brien); Subliminal Psycho—  (A. Hitchcock); Awaiting Oblivion (M. Blanchot); and Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (G. Marcus).

Full details for JWST 6780 - Persecution and the Art of Writing

Death is both the opposite of life and an intimate part of life. Though it comes to us all, human understandings of the process of dying and of our relations to the dead have varied widely. For many, the dead remain engaged with the living for better and for worse. For others, the dead are just history. We will draw on anthropological, sociological, historical and literary texts to understand better this vast range of attitudes toward the dead and the process of dying—and we will come to understand better what we gain and lose by consigning the dead to oblivion. After considering a wide range of comparative studies, we will conclude with an intensive focus on death, dying, and the dead in Jewish cultures.

Full details for JWST 7448 - Death, Dying, and the Dead