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University of KansasThe University of Kansas will offer a core course, Jewish Culture in a Secular Age: The Modern Jewish Revolution and several supporting courses, including, Jewish American Literature and Culture, Jewish American Popular Culture,, Jewish Cultural History, and Contemporary Jewish Identities.
Jewish Culture in a Secular Age: The Modern Jewish Revolution
Beginning in the nineteenth century largely in Western Europe, and continuing through the twentieth century in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, Jews and Jewish communities have been part of a secularizing world, even as Jewish religion and law have likewise been transformed. Jews have responded through the invention of organizations and idioms inconceivable before this era, often both in spite of and in response to massive dislocation. In the past century, Jews became full participants and protagonists in their surrounding cultures and societies, and simultaneously developed new, contingent and flexible ways of identifying as Jews. This course will study how the invention of modern and secular Jewish cultures leaves the question of Jewishness and its boundaries perhaps more richly complex than ever before.
Course outline:
1. Introduction: Modern Jewish Identities and the Meaning of the “Secular”
Readings:
Shneer and Aviv, "Introduction," New Jews
American Jewish Identity Survey, 2001
Selections from Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular
2. Linguistic Boundaries and Porous Ideologies: Modern Jewish Literatures in Jewish Languages
Jews and modernism, language choice, history of Jewish language politics, linguistic assimilation/nationalism, Yiddishism, Hebraism, and gender.
Readings:
C.N. Bialik, City of Slaughter, in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World (“JMW”)
Jacob Glatshteyn in Jewish American Literature
David Bergelson, "Among Refugees," in Shadows of Berlin
Cynthia Ozick, “Envy, or Yiddish in America”
Selections from Seidman, A Marriage Made in Heaven
Selections from Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language
3. The Ordeal of Civility: Jewishness in Modern Western Europe
German Jewish integration; exoticism and resistance to difference
Readings:
Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father
Eduard Bernstein, "How I Grew Up as a Jew in the Diaspora," JMW
Otto Weininger, "The Jew Must Free Himself from Jewishness," JMW
Sigmund Freud, "Address to the Society of Bnai Brith," JMW
Franz Rosenzweig, "Jewish Learning and the Return to Judaism," JMW
Bertha Pappenheim, "The Jewish Woman," JMW
Lara Vapynar, "The Great Jewish Beauty," Guilt and Pleasure
Selections from Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Antisemitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews
4. Secular Jewishness and Jewish Radicalism
Readings:
Chaim Zhitlovsky, “Two Essays about ‘Jew’ and ‘Human’”
Morris Rosenfeld and Dovid Edelshtadt in Jewish American Literature
Rosa Luxemburg, "No Room in my Heart," JMW
Isaac Deutscher, "The Non-Jewish Jew," JMW
5. A Nation Like Any Other?: Jewish Nationalism as a Response to Modernization
Readings:
Theodor Herzl, "A Solution to the Jewish Question," JMW
Ahad Ha'am, "The First Zionist Congress," JMW
Max Nordau, "Jewry of Muscle," JMW
Ber Borochov, "Program for Proletarian Zionism," JMW
Hapoel Hatsair, "Our Goal," JMW
Yitzhak Epstein, "The Hidden Question," JMW
Dubnow, selection from “Autonomism” (1901) and documents of the Bund in JMW
Selections from Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Male
6. Jewish Cities in the Interwar Caldron
Readings:
New York: poetry from M.L. Halperin, Anna Margolin, Bintl Brief, and "From Margin to Mainstream," in "The Great Tide," JAL
ILGWU and Labor Movement, JMW
Chaim Zhitlovsky, "Our Future in America," JMW
Judy Rosen, "Yonkle Doddle Dandy," Guilt and Pleasure
Eddy Portnoy, "Move Over, Miss Polonia," Guilt and Pleasure
David Bergelson, "For 12,000 Bucks," in Shadows of Berlin
7. Antisemitism and Anti-Modernism.
Readings:
Documents on anti-semitism from JMW
Stephen Whitfield, "A Stereotype with Muscle," Guilt and Pleasure
Selections from Theweleit, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
8. World War II and “Postal” Culture; The Nazi Genocide Through the Eyes of Survivors.
Readings:
Documents on the Holocaust in JMW
Art Spiegelman, Maus, in Jewish American Literature
Selections from Kugelmass and Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden
Selections from Pierre Goldman, Dim Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France
Selections from Alain Finkielkraut, The Imaginary Jew
9. Territory, Language, and Identity: The Jewish State
Readings:
Vladimir Jabotinsky, "Jewish Needs vs. Arab Claims," JMW
Peel Commission Report JMW
Haim Hazaz, "The Sermon" JMW
Hashomer Hatsair, "The Case for a Bi-National Palestine," JMW
Proclamation of the State of Israel, JMW
Aharon Megged, Foiglman
Selections from Alcalay, Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing
10. Recuperating and Reinventing Secular Jewish Culture
Readings:
Selections from Jeffrey Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture
Irena Klepfisz, "Bashert," in AJL
Selected Jewish websites (e.g. Jewschool)
Selections from Pakntreger
Jewish American Literature and Culture
What does it mean to be Jewish in contemporary U.S. culture? And how can we address this question if the answers are multiple and vary according to region, generation, gender, class, sexual preference, religious belief, political affiliation, national origin(s), immigration history, family history, etc.? What historical and geopolitical contexts determine the meaning of being Jewish today in the United States or elsewhere? What role do literature and other cultural institutions play in the production, reproduction, and transformation of such meanings? How do these meanings circulate and how do ordinary people engage with them? Whose answers determine the meaning of American Jewishness? In what contexts? These are the major questions this course will address as we examine the role of literature and culture in the construction of social meanings about American Jewishness. To situate students actively within the ongoing process of producing, reproducing, and transforming the meanings of American Jewish identity, this course will offer require students to undertake a project on American Jewish identity grounded either in academic or community-based research.
Course Texts:
Jules Chametzky, et al. Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology
Andrea A. Lunsford, The Everyday Writer
Course Schedule:
Week 1. Lighthearted Beginnings: Literature and culture and the construction of Jewish American identity (JAI). Review syllabus and final project options.
Read “Jewish Humor” 309-325. Project interest forms due.
Week 2. Jewish Time: Torah, prayer, Sabbath, study, holidays.
Read: Rebecca Samuel 38-41, Edna Ferber 269-82, Carl Rakosi, “Services” 611-612. Project assignments and Forms. Meeting Sign-ups.
Alfred Kazin 771-83, Adrienne Rich 996-98, & Allegra Goodman 1135-48.
Week 3. Jewish Place: Diaspora, immigration, “America.”
Read: “General Introduction” 1-16, Isaac Leeser 73-82, Isaac Mayer Wise 83-86. Panel assignments.
“The Great Tide” 109-22, Horace Kallen 206-17, “The Yankee Talmud” 296-97.
Week 4. Jewish Immigrant Experience.
Read: Abraham Cahan 122-33, Yente Serdatsky 150-153, Lamed Shapiro 154-161. Paper One Due.
Mary Antin 190-205 and “A Bintl Briv” 298-308.
Week 5. Jewish Language.
Read: Sidney Nyburg 178-89, Halpern 245-53.
“Jews Translating Jews” 1149-56, poems 1156-70.
Week 6. Jewish Show Business
Read: “The Golden Age of the Broadway Song” 961-78.
View: The Jazz Singer. Paper Two Due. Submit Time Sheets and Supervisor’s Rating Form.
Week 7. Jewish Remembrances
Read: Charles Reznikoff 363, 367-68, 369, Henry Roth, 413-23, Isaac Bashevis Singer 612-23.
Emma Schlesinger, 671-77, Grace Paley, 794-804, Mark Mirsky 1060-66.
Week 8. Holocaust literature and testimony.
Read: Cynthia Ozick 896-99, Elie Wiesel 899-911.
View: The Holocaust: Through Our Own Eyes (a documentary produced by MCHE (Midwest Center for Holocaust Education) consisting of videotaped testimony of local Holocaust survivors, archival photographs, and film footage.
Week 9. Holocaust literature and second-generation writing.
Read: Philip Roth 915-45.
Art Spiegelman 1093-1104, Miriam Moses, 1111-20.
Week 10. Melvin Jules Bukiet 1120-1128, Jacqueline Osherow
1129-33. Paper Three Due.
Weeks 10-11. Young Jewish Americans.
Read: Sh’ma “Inside Next Gen” (November 2005).
Sh’ma “Inside Next Gen” (November 2005).
Jewish American Popular Culture
This course explores the dramatic and theatrical strategies used by Jewish American writers, directors, and actors to negotiate Jewish identity on the American stage and screen. In addition to discussing the functions of these specific representations, we will also examine the performance-driven quality of identity in general. In what ways can Jewishness be viewed as a theatrical construction, both on and off the stage and screen? While our primary focus will be on post-Shoah examples, we will strive to remain cognizant of the longer history of Jews and Jewish popular culture in the United States.
Readings:
1. Antler, Joyce, Ed. Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture
2. Benarde, Scott. Stars of David: Rock ‘N’ Roll’s Jewish Stories
3. Bennett, Roger and Nick Kroll and Jules Schell. Bar Mitzvah Disco: The Music May have Stopped, but the Party’s Never Over
4. Bial, Henry. Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen
5. Brook, Vincent. Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the “Jewish” Sitcom
6. Kesselman, Wendy. The Diary of Anne Frank (Dramatic Adaptation)
7. Shandler, Jeffrey. While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust
Course Schedule:
1. Introduction to the Course
No reading assigned
2. Read: David Mamet, “The Decoration of Jewish Houses” (handout)
And Read: Roger Cushing Aikin, “Was Jud Jewish?” (handout)
Discussion: What does a Jew look like? How does a Jew behave?
3. Read: Andrea Most, “We Know We Belong to the Land: The Theatricality of Assimilation in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!” PMLA 113, 1: 77-89 (free download via JSTOR).
And Read: Acting Jewish, pp. 1-29.
Discussion: Oklahoma!, Musical Theater, How and why we talk about Jewish popular culture.
4. Read: Acting Jewish, pp. 30-85.
Discussion: Death of A Salesman, The Goldbergs, Gentleman’s Agreement, Fiddler on the Roof
5. Read: Acting Jewish, pp. 86-136.
And Read: Talking Back, pp, 171-190.
Discussion: Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, David Mamet, Angels in America, Munich
6. Read: Acting Jewish, pp. 137-157.
And Read: Stars of David, pp. 1-16.
And Read: Something Ain’t Kosher Here, pp. 1-65
Discussion: Catalogues and other Assemblages, Barney Miller, the 1970s
7. Read: Something Ain’t Kosher Here, pp. 66-117.
Discussion: Jackie Mason, Seinfeld, the 1980s
8. Read: Something Ain’t Kosher Here, pp. 118-179.
And Read: Talking Back, pp. 242-252.
Discussion: Fran Drescher, Friends, Mad About You, the 1990s
9. Read: While America Watches, pp. xi-80.
Discussion: What we think we know about the Holocaust and how we know it. Judgment at Nuremberg
10. Read: While America Watches, pp. 81-178.
Discussion: Adolf Eichmann, Star Trek, Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss
11. Read: While America Watches, pp. 179-261.
Discussion: Schindler’s List
12. Read: Kesselman, The Diary of Anne Frank.
Discussion: The Diary and its many incarnations
* 3/2 See: The Diary of Anne Frank at the Lawrence Arts Center, Details TBA
13. Read: Talking Back, pp. 1-52
And Read: Pamela Brown Lavitt, “First of the Red Hot Mamas: "Coon Shouting" and the Jewish Ziegfeld Girl.” American Jewish History 87.4 (1999) 253-290 (free download via Project Muse).
Discussion: Emma Goldman, Anna Held
Term Paper Proposal (200-250 words) Due in Class
14. Read: Talking Back, pp. 53-102
Discussion: Nostalgia, Sophie Tucker, Streisand and The Goldbergs redux
15. Read: Talking Back, pp. 103-152
Discussion: Feminism, The Winds of War, Cynthia Ozick
16. Read: Talking Back, pp. 153-170 and pp. 191-206.
Discussion: Feminism continued, reconciling feminism and faith.
17. Browse: Stars of David, pp. 17-178
And Prepare: Bring a CD with your favorite track by any artist listed in this section of Stars of David
Discussion: Tin Pan Alley history, Bob Dylan, student favorites
18. Browse: Stars of David, pp. 179-316
Discussion: Sounds of the 70s and 80s, The Beastie Boys
19. Browse: Stars of David, pp. 316-end
And Prepare: Bring a CD with your favorite track by any currently-performing Jewish artist not listed in Stars of David.
Discussion: Matisyahu, Klezmatics, student favorites
20. Read: Tony Kushner, Notes on Akiba (handout)
And Read: Linda Lehrhaupt, “The Organizational Seder in American Jewish Life.” Western Folklore 45, 3 (Jul. 1986), 186-202. (Free download via JSTOR)
And Prepare: Bring one (1) copy of any Haggadah to class. Be prepared to point out up to three things you find interesting about it.
Discussion: The American Seder
Special Guest: Jonathan Boyarin
Term Paper Bibliography Due in Class
21. Prepare: Enter the phrase “Jewish Sites” into your favorite internet search engine. Browse for one-hour. As you browse, draw on a piece of paper a tree that shows the connections you make from one link to the next. Bring this tree to class.
Discussion: Jewish on the Internet
22. Read: Bar Mitzvah Disco, pp. TBA
Discussion: TBA
23. Read: Bar Mitzvah Disco, pp. TBA
Discussion: TBA
24. Read: Andrew Furman, “Is the Jew in Vogue?” Tikkun 15,6 (Nov/Dec 2005). (Free Download via Wilson FullText)
And Read: Ilan Stevens, “The End of the Melting Pot.” Tikkun 16, 1 (Jan/Feb 2006) (Free Download via Wilson FullText)
Discussion: Where do we go from here?
25. LAST CLASS MEETING
No Reading Assigned
Term Paper Due in Class
Jewish Cultural History
Note: all references to “CJ” are to readings in Biale, ed., Cultures of the Jews: A New History
1. Introduction to the course
Some key concepts in Jewish cultural history
2. More key concepts
Biale, “Preface: Toward a Cultural History of the Jews,” pp. xvii-xxxiii in CJ
3. Biblical Difference 1: Pardes, “Imagining the Birth of Ancient Israel: National Metaphors in the Bible,” CJ 9-41
4. Biblical Difference II: Hendel, “Israel Among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East,” CJ 43-75
5. Gafni, “Babylonian Rabbinic Culture,” in CJ 223-265
6. Firestone, “Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam,” in CJ 267-301
7. Biale, “Introduction to Part Two: Diversities of Diaspora,” CJ 305-310
Scheindlin, “Merchants and Intellectuals, Rabbis and Poets,” CJ 313-386
8. Gampel, “A Letter to a Wayward Teacher: The Transformation of Sephardic Culture in Christian Iberia,” CJ 389-447
9. Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” CJ 449-516
(possible additional reading: Weinreich, “The Reality of Yiddish versus the Ghetto Myth”)
10. The Memoirs of Glueckel of Hameln
11. The Memoirs of Glueckel of Hameln (continued)
12. Rosman, “Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” CJ 519-570
13. Amy
Biale, “A Journey Between Worlds: East European Jewish Culture from the Partition of Poland to the Holocaust,” CJ 799-860
14. Kugelmass and Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (introduction and selections) (course packet)
15. Horowitz, “Families and Their Fortunes: The Jews of Early Modern Italy,” CJ 573-636
16. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam, pp. 1-75
17. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam, pp. 76-end
18. Biale, “Introduction to Part Three,” CJ 725-729
Rodrigue, “The Ottoman Diaspora: The Rise and Fall of Latino Literary Culture,” 863-885
Excerpts from Alcalay, Before Jews and Arabs (course packet)
19. Ghosh, In an Antique Land
20. Gosh, In an Antique Land (continued)
21. Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions: Jewish Culture in Western and Central Europe in the Modern Age,” CJ 731-796
22. Valensi, “Multicultural Visions: The Cultural Tapestry of the Jews of North Africa,” CJ887-931
Valensi and Wachtel, Jewish Memories, Ch. 1, “From Salonika to Sefrou,” pp. 23-68 (course packet)
23. Friedlander, Vilna on the Seine, “The European Enlightenment in Yiddish Translation: The Life Story of Mordecai Litvine,” pp. 65-79 (course packet)
Valensi and Wachtel, Jewish Memories, Ch. 6, “Wanderings, “ pp. 170-211 (course packet)
Discussion of Paris fieldwork by instructor
24. Hirschfeld, “Locus and Language: Hebrew Culture in Israel, 1890-1990,” CJ 1011-1060
Contemporary Jewish Identities
Key questions this class will address include:
• What does it mean to be Jewish today?
• Who determines those meanings and how?
• At a time when media representations are both almost infinitely reproducible and subject to endless manipulation and combination, does the work of distinguishing between genuine and spurious culture retain any validity or purpose?
• How do conceptions of time and space structure and limit the “deep play” of imagining Jewishness?
Drawing largely on perspectives from anthropology and interdisciplinary cultural studies, this course will look at how Jewishness (like other collective identities) is both given and constructed, in a range of idioms from Chabad (Lubavitch) Hasidism to the Hip Hop Hoodios, and in a range of perspectives including critical theory, ethnography, feature and documentary films and emerging internet content.
Readings present close descriptions of various Jewish communities in Europe, Israel and North America, as well as some fiction.
Required Texts:
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton University Press, 2005)
Benbassa, Esther and Jean-Christophe Attias, The Jew and the Other (Cornell University Press, 2004)
Habib, Jasmin, Israel, Diaspora and the Routes of National Belonging (University of Toronto Press, 2004)
Spiegelman, Art Maus, volume 1
Course Outline:
Part I: Thinking Through Identity
1 Video; “Obsessed With Jews;” Introduction
2 Appiah, Ch. 1
3 Appiah, Ch. 3,4
4 Benbassa and Attia, Chapters 1 and 2
5 Benbassa and Attia, Chapters 3-5 and conclusion
Part II: The Old Country
6 Selections from Boyarin, Polish Jews in Paris (e-reserve)
7 Kugelmass, Jack “Bloody Memories: Encountering the Past in Contemporary Poland” (on e-reserve)
8 Cooper, Alanna E., “Looking Out for One’s Own Identity: Central Asian Jews in the Wake of Communism, in Gitelman, Zvi, ed., New Jewish Identities in Contemporary Europe. Central European University Press. (e-reserve)
Part III: To Israel
9 Habib, Part 1
10 Habib, Part 2
11 Research methods session with Nikhat Ghouse, Watson Room 419
12 Shohat, Ella “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims” (e-reserve)
13 No class-Yom Kippur
Part Four: And the New World
14 Aviv, Caryn and David Shneer, New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora, Ch. 4, “Castro, Chelsea, and Tel Aviv: Queer Jews at Home” (to be distributed in class)
15 Cohen, Steven M. and Arnold M. Eisen, The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America, (Indiana University Press, 2000), introduction and chapter 1 (pp. 1-42) (e-reserve)
16 Eisen & Cohen, conclusion (182-207) (e-reserve)
17 No class
18 Reizbaum, Marilyn, “Surviving on Cat and Maus: Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust Tale,” in Silberstein, Laurence, ed., Mapping Jewish Identities, (New York University Press, 2000) (e-reserve);
Spiegelman, Maus, Volume 1, Chs. 1-3
19 Spiegelman, Maus, remainder of Volume 1
20 David Bezmozgis, “Minyan” and “An Animal to the Memory,” in Natasha
(Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004) (both in e-reserve);
Video – “Odessa, Odessa”
21 Boyarin, “Waiting for a Jew,” in Thinking in Jewish (University of Chicago Press, 1996) (e-reserve)
Boyarin, “The Lower East Side Union of All the Shuls I Go To,” in Blair, Sara & Freedman, Jonathan, eds., Jewish in America (University of Michigan Press, 2004) (e-reserve);
video, “The New Old Country”
22 Shandler, Jeffrey, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language & Culture, pp. 1-58 (e-reserve)
23 Levinson, Julian, “Is There a Jewish Text in this Class?: Jewish Modernism in the Multicultural Academy,” in Blair & Freedman, Jewish in America (e-reserve)
Whitfield, Stephen J., “Why America Has Not Seemed Like Exile,” in Blair & Freedman, eds., Jewish in America (e-reserve)
24 Guest lecturer Henry Bial
Stratton, Jon, “Is ‘Seinfeld’ a Jewish Sitcom?”, in Coming Out Jewish (to be placed on e-reserve)
video, Seinfeld “bris episode”
25 Goldschmidt, 2004 “Food Fights: Contesting ‘Cultural Diversity’ in Crown Heights,” in Checker and Fishman, eds., Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life in America, 159-183 (New York: Columbia University Press) (e-reserve).
video, “The Cohen’s Wife”
26 Broyde, Michael J., “Thanksgiving at the End of November: A Secular or Religious Holiday?” (e-reserve)
27 No reading – Video, “Nobody’s Business”
28 No class
29 Dellheim, Charles, “Is It Good for the Jews? The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravits” in Kugelmass, Jack, ed., Key Texts in American Jewish Culture;
video, selections from The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
Messiah and Modernity
This course combines Jewish religious history with studies in the philosophy of modernity, focusing on changing conceptions of time and history. We will interrogate possible or implicit connections between traditional Jewish notions of Messianic redemption on one hand, and post-Enlightenment conceptions of revolution and progress on the other (always bearing in mind that the dominant Christian ideology in the West also has Messianic content). Some readings will provide historical background on Jewish Messianism. We will explore aspects of the intellectual dialogue between Walter Benjamin, a leading European thinker on literature and the philosophy of history in the first decades of the twentieth century, and his lifelong friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the scholarly study of Jewish mysticism. We will continue by considering how post-World War II thinkers, especially on the Continent, have responded to the critique of modern ideologies of progress inaugurated by Benjamin and his friends in the so-called “Frankfurt School.”
Tentative Syllabus:
1. Introduction to syllabus
Varieties of Messianism
Varieties of Modernity
2. Idel, Messianic Mystics, Introduction: The Sources of Messianic Consciousness
Green, “Introduction: Messiah in Judaism: Rethinking the Question” (handout)
3. Idel, Chapters 1-2
4. Idel, Chapters 3-5
Yuval in course reader
5. Idel, Chapters 7-8
Wolfson in course reader
6. Mendes-Flohr in course reader, 133-167
Arendt, “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940,” in Illuminations (on reserve), pp. 1-55
7. Noelle
Mendes-Flohr in course reader, 370-389
Scholem, “Walter Benjamin,” On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 172-197 (on reserve)
8. Noelle
Scholem, “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism,” “The Messianic Idea in Kabbalism,” and “The Crisis of Tradition in Jewish Messianism,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, pp. 1-77 (on reserve)
9. Annie
Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations (on reserve), pp. 253-264
Scholem, “Walter Benjamin and His Angel,” On Jews and Judaism in Crisis, 198-236 (on reserve)
10. -Annie
Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century;” and “The Task of the Translator,” both in Illuminations
11. Galan
Benjamin, “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man,” Selected Works 3:62-74 and “Theologico-Political Fragment,” Selected Works 3:305-306 (on reserve)
12. Joel
Horkheimer and Adorno, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (on reserve), 3-42
13. Galan
Foucault, Michel, “What Is Enlightenment?” in The Politics of Truth (on reserve), pp. 101-134
14. Joel
Horkheimer and Adorno, “Elements of Anti-Semitism,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (on reserve), pp. 168-208
15. Habermas, Juergen, “Modernity’s Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance,” in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (course reader), pp. 1-22
16. Derrida, Specters of Marx, Ch. 1
17. Derrida, Specters of Marx, Ch. 2
18. Amy
Derrida, Specters of Marx, Chs. 3 and 4
19. Amy
Derrida, Specters of Marx, Ch. 5
20. Kavka, Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy, Introduction and Chapter 1
21. Kavka, Conclusion
22. Cover, “The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction,” Narrative, Violence and the Law: the Essays of Robert Cover (on reserve), pp. 173-201
Jewish Cities
Located at the intersection of studies in Jewish and urban culture, this course draws on a wide range of textual and other evidence, ranging from the Babylonian Talmud to contemporary American literature, to gain an understanding of how Jews have helped to shape and been shaped by their city neighbors. This broad range will allow us to consider the ways in which "the city" does and does not serve as a transhistorical, intercultural unit. Topics examined may include Rabbinic law governing shared courtyards; integration and segregation of Jews in medieval European cities; the formation of the classic "shtetl" settlement pattern as part of the colonization of Eastern Europe; acculturation of North African Jews placed "between" French colonizers and their Muslim neighbors; Odessa and Vilna as ideal-or stereotypes of rough-and-tumble versus refined Jewish society; memoirs of the golden age of Berlin Jewry; the immigrant ghetto of the Lower East Side, and the flight of immigrants' children thence. This will afford ample consideration of the involvement of urban Jewish communities on processes such as modernization and colonialism, and the effect those processes had in turn on the Jewish communities. Readings will include historical, ethnographic and literary materials, and the syllabus will likely include films as well.
Tentative Syllabus:
1. Intro; Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Metsia, passages dealing with shared use rights of neighbors to a common courtyard.
2. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities. Short movie: [The Last Jewish Town] Jewish population in cities around the world (website)
3. Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto (“emancipation” of Jews into early modern urban society)
4 Esther Bronner, A Weave of Women (Jerusalem)
5. Albert Memmi, The Pillar of Salt (Tunis)
6. Joelle Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish-Muslim Household in Colonial Algeria, 1937-1962
Speaker (Joelle Bahloul) or film
7. Hugo Bettauer, The City Without Jews: A Novel of Our Time (Vienna), late 20s-early 30s
8. Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood Around 1900
9. Sarah Kofman, Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (Paris)
Film: Madame Rosa
10. Isaac Babel, Odessa Stories ; selections from Steven Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa. A Cultural History, 1794-1881.
11. Andre Aciman, Out of Egypt (Cairo)
12. Wallace Markfield, Teitlebaum’s Window (New York)
Guest: Elissa Sampson
13. Film: Hester Street
Classical and Contemporary Jewish Thought
An introduction to individual Jewish thinkers and collective projects from Philo to the present including Talmud and Midrash, Middle Age and Early Modern Jewish philosophical and Talmudic rationalism and mysticism, Spinoza, Cohen, Soloveitchik, Rosenzweig, and Levinas.
[Note: this will be new course for 2007-2008, so no syllabus is available yet.]
Back to Sample Course Descriptions
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