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.

Catalog Distribution: (FL-AG)

Full details for JWST 1101 - Elementary Modern Hebrew I

Sequel to HEBRW 1101-HEBRW 1102. Continued development of reading, writing, grammar, oral comprehension, and speaking skills.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (FL-AG)

Full details for JWST 1103 - Elementary Modern Hebrew III

Elementary Yiddish I is the first in a three-class sequence that will enable students to meet their Arts & Sciences language requirement in Yiddish. It provides an introduction to reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Yiddish contains a wealth of embedded knowledge about Ahkenazi Jewish life, both historical and contemporary. In addition to language competence the course will build understanding of this legacy through songs, humor, holiday traditions, literature, and other cultural products.

Full details for JWST 1776 - Elementary Yiddish I

Explore the ways of 19th to 21st century Russian Jewry through survey of literature and film. Learn about life in Russia from the perspective of Jewish and Russian-Jewish writers as well as through portrayal of Russian Jews in works of prominent Russian authors in the context of period. Selected works of Pushkin and Chekhov, Gogol and Sholom Aleichem, Pasternak and Yevtushenko will help create a multidimensional picture of the political and socio-cultural environment in which processes of integration and assimilation, both imposed and impeded by the state, shaped the identity of the modern-day Russian Jews in their deep, inherent connection to the Russian culture and often complicated relationship with their roots, which characteristically distinguishes them from their American contemporaries.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 2001 - Russian Jews and Jewish Russians in Literature and Film

Where have humans found truth? Will the truths we uphold today remain true tomorrow? Leaning on discussion and close reading of texts, this seminar asks students to think about how truth becomes history and how historically-situated concepts, values and norms become true. Examining the ways in which thinkers and writers from a variety of different perspectives have conceived what truth is (and isn't), the class will focus on notions of truth and falsehood in religion, science, philosophy, and literature. Specific themes for consideration and discussion will include: the role of divinity in underwriting truth claims; the place of truth-standards in the study of nature and the development of new technology; the moralization of truth and lies; the disillusionment with absolutes and the increasing "relativization" of truth in the modern age.

Full details for JWST 2441 - Truths: A History from Antiquity to the Modern

This course explores the history of the Holocaust during which the Nazis murdered six million Jews. Topics covered in this class include the history of antisemitism in Europe and twentieth-century Germany, the origins and rule of the Nazis, the politics of World War II, the Final Solution and extermination camps, Jewish literary responses to the Holocaust, among other topics.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 2467 - Holocaust in History and Memory

This course is an introductory survey to various aspects of Israeli culture, society, and history. Through a close examination of various media (film, music, literature) as well as key events and social and political facts, students explore a range of phenomena related to Israeli social practices and its political system, alongside a chronological overview of changes in Israeli culture and society over time. Topics covered may include geography, immigration, demographics, inequality, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hebrew language, gender, literature, film, among others.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 2488 - Modern Israel: History, Culture, Society

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 Kafkaesque parable of Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 and the fantastic cartoons of Spiegelman's Maus books as well as W.G, Sebald's Austerlitz. We shall conclude with several episodes of the acclaimed 2009-2017 French TV series A French Village.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, SCD-AS) (CA-AG, D-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 2580 - Imagining the Holocaust

Full details for JWST 2666 - Apocalypse!

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is a repository of ancient Israelite religious, political, social, historical, and literary traditions. For the modern reader these ancient traditions are often obscured by a focus on the text as revelation. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the biblical world by reading the Hebrew Bible in translation, on its own terms, as a body of literature that evolved in an ancient Near Eastern context. The Bible itself will be the primary text for the course, but students will also be exposed to the rich and diverse textual traditions of the ancient Near East, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Moab, and Ugarit. In addition, this course will explore the impact of early biblical interpretation on shaping the monotheistic traditions inherited in the West. As participants in a secular course on the Bible, students will be challenged to question certain cultural assumptions about the composition and authorship of the Bible, and will be expected to differentiate between a text's content and its presumed meaning.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 2724 - Conflict and Coexistence in the Jewish Bible-Old Testament

Full details for JWST 2925 - The Anthropology of Israel-Palestine

This constitutes the first course in our third year of the Modern Hebrew language sequence.  Development of speech proficiency will be emphasized. Over the course of the semester, students will develop reading comprehension through reading a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts, listening comprehension through screening of filmic works and episodes drawn from popular television series, writing through communication about what is read and screened, as well as more personal topics, and speech through in class discussion and oral presentations.  Readings will include authentic and partially adapted contemporary short stories, poems and newspaper articles.  

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 3101 - Advanced Modern Hebrew I

This course is intended to continue the development of all aspects of Hebrew language skills. Emphasis, however, will be placed on speaking skills and understanding through the use of various outlets in Israeli media: television, film, online sources, newspapers, songs and literature. The use of text and media material relevant to Israeli contemporary society and culture will help the students to gain better understanding of Israeli society and culture.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 3103 - Advanced Hebrew Through Media

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.

Catalog Distribution: (HST-AS, SCD-AS) (D-AG, HA-AG)

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

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.

Catalog Distribution: (ETM-AS, HST-AS)

Full details for JWST 3222 - Early Modern Philosophy

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.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 4310 - Methods in Medieval

The modern Jewish religious movement known as Hasidism began in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century and thrives today. We will approach Hasidism primarily through three avenues: recent critical social history; selections from Hasidic literature; and ethnographic accounts of Hasidic life today. By the end of the semester, students will be able to articulate some ways that Hasidism reflects both broader trends in European religious and moral thought of its time, and some ways that it represents distinctively Jewish developments. You will also gain a deeper appreciation of the various kinds of evidence and disciplinary approaches that need to be brought to bear on the attempt to articulate as broad, deep and varied a phenomenon as modern Hasidic Judaism.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, ETM-AS) (CA-AG, KCM-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 4407 - Hasidism: History, Community, Thought

Full details for JWST 4548 - The Bible in America

In this seminar, we will examine the war's major turning points on the European theater in order to understand not only the nature of this conflict, but also the forces that made it possible. We will look closely at the two superpowers that clashed on the continent, turning Europe into a veritable inferno for the people caught in between. What kinds of societies were Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia? How did the war affect them and their regimes? We will also survey the spaces in between to discover why these two vast empires competed so ruthlessly over them. We will find out how the populations caught between these two giants made ends meet, both by cooperating and by resisting the great powers. Although some knowledge of what was going on at the front will be helpful, this class is not a course in military history. As a result, it focuses primarily on the social and cultural dimensions of war - which it explores through a variety of sources, including fiction, memoirs, and films. Topics include the occupation and destruction of Poland; the fall of France; Hitler's Europe and the Holocaust; resistance and collaboration with Nazi occupation forces across Europe; the Soviet experience of war; as well as the effect of war on family life, politics, and societies in Europe.

Full details for JWST 4672 - Europe in Flames: World War II and its Aftermath

This course offers Jewish Studies majors a chance to write a significant research essay that allows for depth of study of a topic of interest to each individual student. Because it is a required course for the major, it is also intended to create a sense of community among majors and provide collective support for the students' research and writing. In this course, student research will be guided through individual meetings with the instructor as well as in-class writing exercises and peer review. 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.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 4769 - Research in Jewish Studies

This extraordinary figure died in 1941, and his death  is emblematic of the intellectual depredations of Nazism. Yet since World War II, his influence, his reputation, and his fascination for scholars in a wide range of cultural and political disciplines has steadily grown. He is seen as a bridging figure between German and Jewish studies, between materialist critique of culture and the submerged yet powerful voice of theology, between literary history and philosophy. We will review Benjamin's life and some of the key disputes over his heritage; read some of the best-known of his essays; and devote significant time to his enigmatic and enormously rich masterwork, the Arcades Project, concluding with consideration of the relevance of Benjamin's insights for cultural and political dilemmas today.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 4913 - Walter Benjamin

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.

Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) (CA-AG, HA-AG, LA-AG)

Full details for JWST 4998 - Honors Research I

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

The modern Jewish religious movement known as Hasidism began in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century and thrives today. We will approach Hasidism primarily through three avenues: recent critical social history; selections from Hasidic literature; and ethnographic accounts of Hasidic life today. By the end of the semester, students will be able to articulate some ways that Hasidism reflects both broader trends in European religious and moral thought of its time, and some ways that it represents distinctively Jewish developments. You will also gain a deeper appreciation of the various kinds of evidence and disciplinary approaches that need to be brought to bear on the attempt to articulate as broad, deep and varied a phenomenon as modern Hasidic Judaism.

Full details for JWST 7404 - Hasidism: History, Community, Thought

This extraordinary figure died in 1941, and his death is emblematic of the intellectual depredations of Nazism. Yet since World War II, his influence, his reputation, and his fascination for scholars in a wide range of cultural and political disciplines has steadily grown. He is seen as a bridging figure between German and Jewish studies, between materialist critique of culture and the submerged yet powerful voice of theology, between literary history and philosophy. We will review Benjamin's life and some of the key disputes over his heritage; read some of the best-known of his essays; and devote significant time to his enigmatic and enormously rich masterwork, the Arcades Project, concluding with consideration of the relevance of Benjamin's insights for cultural and political dilemmas today.

Full details for JWST 7913 - Walter Benjamin