Courses Taught
(syllabi available upon request)
HIST/JWST 1818 -- Introduction to Jewish History, Origins-1492
In this introduction to history and Jewish Studies, we will study how the world’s oldest global people went from being a monotheistic, agricultural tribe living in polytheistic ancient empires to a religio-ethnic group expelled from Spain the same year Columbus set sail for America.
We investigate the process and meaning of change over time by asking how a given custom, trait, or text came to be identified as “Jewish.” For example, how does one know the difference between someone who is Greek and someone who is Jewish in Alexander the Great’s Hellenic Empire? Is it language, culture, religious practices, or something else? Then we will ask how those signs of Jewish difference changed in specific places and different times.
One of our core themes is diaspora and home, and how Jews came to be the group defining the word “diaspora” and how this connects to contemporary debates about migration and identity. The course ends in 1492 and is bracketed by two major expulsions of Jews. The first took place in 586BCE when Judeans in Jerusalem were conquered and scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire, which had defeated them in a military battle. The second took place in 1492, when newly united Christian Spain expelled its Jews, a deeply integrated class of its own people, not only from its kingdom but also from all Spanish lands. We will ask how these two defining moments in Jewish history look similar and also radically different given the changed historical conditions after the passing of 2000 years. In addition, we will consider how modern scholars and thinkers have tried to make sense of the far-back past, and how we as people living now can approach a set of places and times very different from our own.
HIST/JWST 1828 -- Introduction to Jewish History Since 1492
Jewish history is transnational history. It is the story of a group of people held together (but not always closely together) by ethnic identity, cultural heritage, and religious tradition, dispersed throughout much of the world and engaged in a range of negotiations with each other and with the societies in which they lived about what it meant to be a Jew, what it meant to be a Jew in the modern—and eventually in the post-modern—world.
We’ll study the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the Sephardic (Spanish) diaspora that formed in its wake; the rise of new Jewish movements (some of which were seen as heretical at the time) such as the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) in Eastern and Western Europe as well as the Mediterranean world, the engagement of Jews with modern ideologies such as socialism, liberalism, and nationalism; Jewish migration and Jewish separateness from and integration into host societies; Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, the Holocaust and its aftermath, and the history and legacy of the Jewish communities of North America.
This course focuses on reading primary texts, placing them in the appropriate cultural context, and understanding the ways in which Jews disagreed with each other at various points in history about the right way to be Jewish or to be politically active as Jews in the Early Modern and Modern worlds.
HIST/JWST 4338 -- History of Modern Israel/Palestine
The State of Israel declared its independence, on the land the world had long known as Palestine, on May 14, 1948. But the History of Modern Israel/Palestine cannot be told without reference to that which preceded Israel’s founding and that which occurred outside of its borders. This class interweaves the history of Palestine/the Land of Israel, the Zionist movement, modern Jewish history, the history of Palestine, and the history of Arab and Palestinian nationalism, as well as the history of the Israeli state. The course proceeds chronologically, weaving together political history (the history of political leaders and decisions), intellectual history (the history of ideas), and cultural and social history (the history of the way that ordinary people lived their lives).
Students, over the course of the semester, work to achieve the following goals:
· Be familiar with the major events, places, and personalities that shaped Palestine/Israel both in the years preceding Israeli statehood and the years since. Identify key turning points in history.
· Be able to describe how regional and international trends, ideas, actors, and politics affected, directed, or limited local choices of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs.
· Understand ways in which Jewish and Arab politics were internally complicated and describe the major ideological divisions within the Jewish and Zionist community and the Palestinian Arab community.
· Learn how to discuss as a scholar events or ideas about which many people disagree and which may be subject to multiple interpretations. This means, taking a (temporary) step back from one’s own beliefs or assumptions and describing other people’s views coherently and fairly.
· Become comfortable reading and analyzing primary sources: identifying the point of view of the writer, finding key phrases or points that indicate the focus of the argument, and connecting individual opinions with the broader historical developments we are learning about in class.
· Improve one’s ability to understand scholarly articles, which may on the surface be complicated or confusing. Identify main arguments and ways in which the article supports or challenges the broader narratives are learning.
HIST/JWST 4348 -- Tel Aviv: Urban History and Culture
This seminar offers a multifaceted exploration of the city of Tel Aviv, founded in 1909 as a new Jewish garden suburb of the city of Jaffa. On its centennial in 2009, the city planned an array of festivities and commemorations; the event also sparked reflections on the history and evolution of the city as well as its relationship to the much older Jaffa, which it overtook and eventually annexed. Tel Aviv, planned from the ground up as a model Zionist city, was the site of Zionist political and cultural activity, a symbol for the movement’s development, and a space in which the meanings of Zionism have been continually contested. Through inquiries into urban studies, city planning, architecture, identity, space, politics, language, culture, and conflict we will use the prism of one metropolitan area to explore themes in urban studies, the history of Palestine and Israel, the tensions of Zionist and Israeli state building, and Israeli-Palestinian relations in the 20th and early 21st century.
HIST/JWST 4378 -- History of Modern Jewish-Muslim Relations
The relationship between Jews and Muslims has gone through multiple phases in the modern period as the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans; moved between Ottoman imperial rule, European colonial rule, and independent statehood in various political forms. This course explores how politics, economics, and ideologies, both locally and regionally, shaped the lives and relations of two different religious groups, both also defined by language use, ethnic identity, and regional loyalties. We’ll consider Jewish culture and identity in an Islamic context; Jews’ and Muslims’ encounters with empire, westernization, and nationalism; issues of migration and diasporic identities; and the impact of Zionism, European Jewish settlement in Palestine, and the emergence of the State of Israel on Jewish-Muslim relations in the Middle East and beyond. The last part of the course will deal with Jewish-Muslims relations and attempts at dialogue in contemporary France and the United States.
HIST 6800 (Graduate Seminar) -- Microhistory
This course is focused on the justifications for and utility of looking at the small, the local, or the seemingly insignificant in order to shed light on bigger historical trends, debates, and changes. Our readings will combine theoretical texts about methodological approaches with examples of the genre from around the world and from different historical periods. Students will, over the course of the semester, produce a paper built around a single incident, event, story, or case from their field and period of research, and work on reading, interpreting and contextualizing that event through reference to literature on the broader topics about which that incident or event raises questions.
In this introduction to history and Jewish Studies, we will study how the world’s oldest global people went from being a monotheistic, agricultural tribe living in polytheistic ancient empires to a religio-ethnic group expelled from Spain the same year Columbus set sail for America.
We investigate the process and meaning of change over time by asking how a given custom, trait, or text came to be identified as “Jewish.” For example, how does one know the difference between someone who is Greek and someone who is Jewish in Alexander the Great’s Hellenic Empire? Is it language, culture, religious practices, or something else? Then we will ask how those signs of Jewish difference changed in specific places and different times.
One of our core themes is diaspora and home, and how Jews came to be the group defining the word “diaspora” and how this connects to contemporary debates about migration and identity. The course ends in 1492 and is bracketed by two major expulsions of Jews. The first took place in 586BCE when Judeans in Jerusalem were conquered and scattered throughout the Babylonian Empire, which had defeated them in a military battle. The second took place in 1492, when newly united Christian Spain expelled its Jews, a deeply integrated class of its own people, not only from its kingdom but also from all Spanish lands. We will ask how these two defining moments in Jewish history look similar and also radically different given the changed historical conditions after the passing of 2000 years. In addition, we will consider how modern scholars and thinkers have tried to make sense of the far-back past, and how we as people living now can approach a set of places and times very different from our own.
HIST/JWST 1828 -- Introduction to Jewish History Since 1492
Jewish history is transnational history. It is the story of a group of people held together (but not always closely together) by ethnic identity, cultural heritage, and religious tradition, dispersed throughout much of the world and engaged in a range of negotiations with each other and with the societies in which they lived about what it meant to be a Jew, what it meant to be a Jew in the modern—and eventually in the post-modern—world.
We’ll study the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the Sephardic (Spanish) diaspora that formed in its wake; the rise of new Jewish movements (some of which were seen as heretical at the time) such as the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) in Eastern and Western Europe as well as the Mediterranean world, the engagement of Jews with modern ideologies such as socialism, liberalism, and nationalism; Jewish migration and Jewish separateness from and integration into host societies; Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel, the Holocaust and its aftermath, and the history and legacy of the Jewish communities of North America.
This course focuses on reading primary texts, placing them in the appropriate cultural context, and understanding the ways in which Jews disagreed with each other at various points in history about the right way to be Jewish or to be politically active as Jews in the Early Modern and Modern worlds.
HIST/JWST 4338 -- History of Modern Israel/Palestine
The State of Israel declared its independence, on the land the world had long known as Palestine, on May 14, 1948. But the History of Modern Israel/Palestine cannot be told without reference to that which preceded Israel’s founding and that which occurred outside of its borders. This class interweaves the history of Palestine/the Land of Israel, the Zionist movement, modern Jewish history, the history of Palestine, and the history of Arab and Palestinian nationalism, as well as the history of the Israeli state. The course proceeds chronologically, weaving together political history (the history of political leaders and decisions), intellectual history (the history of ideas), and cultural and social history (the history of the way that ordinary people lived their lives).
Students, over the course of the semester, work to achieve the following goals:
· Be familiar with the major events, places, and personalities that shaped Palestine/Israel both in the years preceding Israeli statehood and the years since. Identify key turning points in history.
· Be able to describe how regional and international trends, ideas, actors, and politics affected, directed, or limited local choices of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs.
· Understand ways in which Jewish and Arab politics were internally complicated and describe the major ideological divisions within the Jewish and Zionist community and the Palestinian Arab community.
· Learn how to discuss as a scholar events or ideas about which many people disagree and which may be subject to multiple interpretations. This means, taking a (temporary) step back from one’s own beliefs or assumptions and describing other people’s views coherently and fairly.
· Become comfortable reading and analyzing primary sources: identifying the point of view of the writer, finding key phrases or points that indicate the focus of the argument, and connecting individual opinions with the broader historical developments we are learning about in class.
· Improve one’s ability to understand scholarly articles, which may on the surface be complicated or confusing. Identify main arguments and ways in which the article supports or challenges the broader narratives are learning.
HIST/JWST 4348 -- Tel Aviv: Urban History and Culture
This seminar offers a multifaceted exploration of the city of Tel Aviv, founded in 1909 as a new Jewish garden suburb of the city of Jaffa. On its centennial in 2009, the city planned an array of festivities and commemorations; the event also sparked reflections on the history and evolution of the city as well as its relationship to the much older Jaffa, which it overtook and eventually annexed. Tel Aviv, planned from the ground up as a model Zionist city, was the site of Zionist political and cultural activity, a symbol for the movement’s development, and a space in which the meanings of Zionism have been continually contested. Through inquiries into urban studies, city planning, architecture, identity, space, politics, language, culture, and conflict we will use the prism of one metropolitan area to explore themes in urban studies, the history of Palestine and Israel, the tensions of Zionist and Israeli state building, and Israeli-Palestinian relations in the 20th and early 21st century.
HIST/JWST 4378 -- History of Modern Jewish-Muslim Relations
The relationship between Jews and Muslims has gone through multiple phases in the modern period as the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans; moved between Ottoman imperial rule, European colonial rule, and independent statehood in various political forms. This course explores how politics, economics, and ideologies, both locally and regionally, shaped the lives and relations of two different religious groups, both also defined by language use, ethnic identity, and regional loyalties. We’ll consider Jewish culture and identity in an Islamic context; Jews’ and Muslims’ encounters with empire, westernization, and nationalism; issues of migration and diasporic identities; and the impact of Zionism, European Jewish settlement in Palestine, and the emergence of the State of Israel on Jewish-Muslim relations in the Middle East and beyond. The last part of the course will deal with Jewish-Muslims relations and attempts at dialogue in contemporary France and the United States.
HIST 6800 (Graduate Seminar) -- Microhistory
This course is focused on the justifications for and utility of looking at the small, the local, or the seemingly insignificant in order to shed light on bigger historical trends, debates, and changes. Our readings will combine theoretical texts about methodological approaches with examples of the genre from around the world and from different historical periods. Students will, over the course of the semester, produce a paper built around a single incident, event, story, or case from their field and period of research, and work on reading, interpreting and contextualizing that event through reference to literature on the broader topics about which that incident or event raises questions.
