Upcoming Courses for Winter 2025
Undergraduate or Co-undergraduate/graduate Courses
JWSC 22906 (= RLST 22906, HIJD 32906) The Book of Ezekiel
Winter
Simeon Chavel
This course introduces the historical world around the Book of Ezekiel, the literary world portrayed within Ezekiel, the book's literary characteristics, and its meaning. The course is geared both to readers of the Bible in English and to readers of the Bible in Hebrew. Simeon Chavel
JWSC 26706 (= RLST 26706, HIJD 36706) Humor and Judaism in the Middle Ages
Winter
Yehuda Halper
We shall examine medieval Jewish humoristic writings of 12-14th Spain and Southern France against the backdrop of the curious fact that the authors of these writings were also some of the most important medieval Jewish philosophers of the period. Is it coincidence that Aristotelian philosophers also wrote lasting works of humor? Did they see their humoristic writings as diversions from their philosophical and scientific activities or part of a larger project? If the latter, what kind of philosophical content could be in these writings? Is such humor a skeptical approach to serious science? Does it reflect deeper ethical questions? Does humor provide a place to question religious tenets? To approach these questions we will read the central writings of these thinkers, beginning with Joseph Ibn Zabara’s Book of Delights, then turning to Immanuel of Rome’s Canto’s, then Qalonimos ben Qalonimos’ Eben Bohan and Purim parody, and finally turning to Gersonides’s Purim parodies. We shall take into consideration questions of genre such as the influence of the Arabic maqamat, Italian parodies, and French farces.
JWSC 27660 (= RLST 27660, RLVC 37660, HIJD 37660) Animals and Jewish Literature
Winter
Anna Elena Torres
This course explores the representation of animality in Jewish literature and visual art. We will explore questions of animal ethics and ecological entanglement across a range of secular and religious genres, from folklore and poetry to Hasidic tales and rabbinic narrative. Writers will include Kafka, Sholem Aleichem, Celan; artists will include Soutine, Chagall, Sarah Shor, and more.
Courses from Past Quarters:
Autumn 2024
Undergraduate or Co-undergraduate/graduate Courses
JWSC 20120 (= BIBL 31000, NEHC 20504/30504, RLST 11004, HIJD 31004, FNDL 11004) Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.
Autumn T/Th 9:30 – 10:50 am
Jeffrey Stackert
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is a complex anthology of disparate texts and reflects a diversity of religious, political, and historical perspectives from ancient Israel and Judah. Because this collection of texts continues to play an important role in modern religions, new significances are often imposed upon this ancient literature. In this course, we will attempt to read biblical texts on their own terms and will also contextualize their ideas and goals with texts and material culture from ancient Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine, and Egypt. In this way, we will discover that the Hebrew Bible is fully part of the cultural milieu of the ancient Near East. We will read a significant portion of the Hebrew Bible in English, along with selections from other ancient Near Eastern texts as well as secondary literature. This course will include discussion sections.
JWSC 23413 (= HIST 22213/32213) Without a Label: The Emergence of Modern Jewish Self in the 19th Century
Autumn Th 8:00 – 10:50 am
Svetlana Natkovich
How does one come to comprehend and mediate themselves in a society that does not presuppose their existence as autonomous, dignified subjects? As Europe was transitioning from absolutist monarchies to nation-states, Jewish communities were trying to reinvent themselves in a world where their very existence challenged the new premises about a “proper” society. In between, there were individuals who tried to understand their Jewishness in this new, changing reality. The course will concentrate on modernized Jewish individuals, predominantly in Central and Eastern Europe, who fashioned new models of modern Jewish existence in the 19th century. Paradoxically, their literature was written in languages and through literary models that weren’t adjusted to convey the story of Jewish modernity. During the course, through detailed analysis of the literature and the existential conditions of the Jews, we will discuss the dynamics of modern self-fashioning and the role of literature in this process.
JWSC 23480 (= PLSC 23480/33480, DEMS 23480) Without a Label: The Emergence of Modern Jewish Self in the 19th Century
Autumn M 1:30 – 4:20 pm
Limor Yehuda
How do law and politics interact in contexts of deep national division? What are the limits of international law, human rights, and liberal democracy in addressing violent conflict? And what alternatives arise when conventional approaches—such as territorial partition and a focus on individual rights—fall short? This course explores these questions through the case of Israel-Palestine, examined in comparative perspective alongside other divided societies, including Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Cyprus. Students will analyze how legal frameworks—both domestic and international—shape, constrain, or enable political arrangements in protracted conflicts. Core concepts such as sovereignty, self-determination, and the tension between individual and collective rights will be explored through competing understandings of peace and justice. Drawing on the emerging framework of Collective Equality, the course invites critical reflection on the foundational principles needed to support sustainable models of conflict transformation.
JWSC 28995 (= CMLT 28995/38995, GNSE 20155/30155, RLVC 38995, RLST 28995) Queer Love Poetry
Autumn T/Th 11:00 – 12:20 pm
Anna Elena Torres
This course examines the long history of queer love poetry, from the ancient world to postmodernism. Its readings are particularly interested in how modernists claimed literary lineages of queer poetics, queered social practices and communal literary spaces, and reinvented verse forms to reflect queer eros. We will study works from Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Greek, and several other languages. No prerequisites. Open to undergrad and grad students.
Graduate Courses
Note: Some graduate courses may be open to undergraduates with the consent of the instructor.
BIBL 41100 The Composition of the Pentateuch
Autumn W 3:00 – 5:50 pm
Jeffrey Stackert
This course will be an in-depth study of the composition of the Pentateuch/Torah and the various scholarly analyses that have been proposed for it. We will consider the origins and implications of different theories and examine various texts as case studies for understanding how the different approaches work. All biblical texts will be read in Hebrew.
PQ: Strong biblical Hebrew.
Course Note: Undergraduates must petition to enroll.
BIBL 44602 (= HIJD 44602) The Song of Songs
Autumn Fr 11:30 am – 2:20 pm
Simeon Chavel
In this text course, we will combine philology and literary theory to describe the work's coherence as a single speech event -- as a single poem and not a collection. We will also analyze its distinctive word-smithing and tones. We will also attend to its paratext, at 1:1; in the rubrics in the ancient Greek witnesses; and in the chapter division.
PQ: 1 year of biblical Hebrew and 1 text course.
Course Note: Undergraduates may petition to enroll.
HIJD 53400 (= RLVC 53400, AASR 53400) Salvage Poetics: Literature as Ethnography
Autumn M 9:30 am – 12:20 pm
Sheila Jelen
This interdisciplinary course will synthesize ethnographic and literary discourses to consider the ways in which the culture of the Jewish “shtetl,” the small towns and villages in eastern Europe where Jewish culture thrived for nearly a millennium, has been represented in the United States after the Holocaust, from the 1940s to the present day. We will read a wide variety of materials within the field of anthropology as well as Jewish literatures and cultures to tease out the concept of “salvage poetics” or a literary poetics that has been forged in popular attempts to bridge dramatically different historical moments, different geographic locations, and different cultures across the abyss of the Holocaust.