J S - Jewish Studies

Jewish Studies: J S

Lower-Division Courses

J S X01. Introduction to Jewish Studies.

J S X04M. Jewish Civilization: Beginnings to 1492.

Introduction to the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people from around 1000 BC to the end of the medieval period. Subjects may include ancient Israel, late Second Temple sectarianism, the rise of Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, medieval Jewish philosophy, Jewish mysticism, and Hebrew poetry.

J S X04N. Jewish Civilization: 1492 to the Present.

Subjects may include trends toward secularization, the emancipation of European Jewry, the emergence of American Jewry, the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

J S X05D. Introduction to Jewish Latin America.

Historical and cultural analysis of how Jews constructed lives and communities in predominantly Hispanic, Catholic countries of Latin America.

J S X06E. The Rise of Christianity.

Introduction to the origins and development of Christianity.

J S X07. Introduction to Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Examine interdisciplinary perspectives (including historical, political, socio-psychological, and cultural methods and insights) on genocide as a global phenomenon.

J S X10R. Introduction to Middle East Religions.

Introduction to the religious landscape of the Middle East including the various expressions of Eastern Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as well as Zoroastrianism.

J S X11. Topics in Jewish Studies.

J S X11.2. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Introduction.

Examines the intertwined historical developments of the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and explores the principal beliefs and practices of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

J S X11.4. Introduction to the Old Testament.

Introduction to the many interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and its meaning in the context of its historical and cultural setting in the ancient Near East.

J S X11.7. The History of Israel.

An introduction to the history of Israel, from the emergence of the modern Zionist movement beginning in 1881 to the present.

J S X11.9. American Jews: The Yiddish Experience.

Focuses on over a century of Yiddish-based contributions to American literature, music, and film, including works by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Michael Chabon, Woody Allen, and the Marx Brothers.

J S X11C. The Roots of Religious Toleration.

Examines how freedom of conscience and religion crystallized in western and central Europe, both as a pragmatic practice and as a matter of principle.

J S X11E. Comparative Religious Ethics.

J S X14C. Jewish American Literature and Culture.

Examine Jewish American literature in its cultural contexts with an emphasis on skills and methods. Explore texts, drawn from a variety of genres and periods, that indicate the range of Jewish American experiences and how those experiences are influenced by issues such as citizenship, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

J S X17. American Jewish History.

Examine the history of Jews in the United States from the seventeenth century to the present. Explore the formation of a distinct American Judaism and the involvement of Jews in American cultural and political affairs.

J S X19S. Topics in Jewish Studies.

This course is used to record credit the student earns while enrolled at another institution in a program administered by the University's Study Abroad Office. Credit is recorded as assigned by the study abroad adviser in the Center for Jewish Studies. University credit is awarded for work in an exchange program; it may be counted as coursework taken in residence. Transfer credit is awarded for work in an affiliated studies program.

Upper-Division Courses

J S X29S. Topics in Jewish Studies.

J S X62. Independent Research in Jewish Studies.

Tutorially directed research in Jewish studies.

J S X63. Topics in the Humanities and Arts.

J S X63.10. The Sacred and the Secular in Contemporary Jewish Literature.

J S X63.17. Israel Through Its Literature.

J S X63.18. Jerusalem in Israeli Literature.

J S X63.19. Postmodernist Israeli Literature.

Study of the first decades of Israeli literature. Themes include the establishment of a new state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, conflict between Israel and Arab nations, and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

J S X63.21. Introduction to the Music of the Middle East.

J S X63.22. Comparative Jewish Literature: Israel, France, and the United States.

J S X63.23. Israel and Palestine: A Cultural Perspective.

J S X63.24. Divine Persuasion in Biblical Times and Place.

Explore the use of persuasive strategies in an ancient and non-Western culture, that of the Hebrew Bible. Using rhetorical techniques, analyze three types of texts: narratives of interactions between ordinary people and God; interactions between people, God, and authorized prophets; and prayers in prose and poetry.

J S X63.25. Jewish Folklore.

J S X63.26. Debating Genesis.

J S X63.27. Jewish Identities In the Americas.

Examine the work of Jewish creative intellectuals from the United States, Latin America, and Canada from a comparative perspective.

J S X63.28. Biblical Prophecy.

An introduction to the diversity of prophetic literature in the Old Testament, its historical development, social context, and Near Eastern parallels.

J S X63.29. The Book of Job.

J S X63.30. Law and Justice in the Bible.

Examine the legal traditions of the Torah (Pentateuch) and what they reveal about the practice of law and justice in ancient Israel and the wider biblical world.

J S X63.31. Jewish Stereotypes in American Literature and Culture.

Examine stereotypes that have come to define Jewishness in American culture by focusing both on the antisemitic tropes perpetuated by non-Jewish representations of 'the Jew' in literary classics and on the archetypes employed as coping mechanisms in cultural representations created by Jews themselves. Analyze how stereotypes become enmeshed in cultural consciousness and investigate ways in which representations of ethnic, religious, and racial minorities are governed by these kinds of one-dimensional archetypes.

J S X63.32. Childrearing in Israel.

Examine the coalescence of educational theories and national aspirations in the process of shaping child-rearing practices within the Jewish population of Palestine under the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate and into the first two decades of the State of Israel.

J S X63.33. Jews of the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Explore the cultural history of Jews in the United States, Latin America, and Canada through a representative sample of short literary texts, film clips, and musical recordings.

J S X63.34. Space, Time, and Religion.

Examine religions through the concepts of space and time.

J S X63.35. Memory and Place After the Holocaust.

Examine the literature of Eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors and their artistic successors. Engage novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, and even song lyrics with questions of memory and of place.

J S X63.36. Sports and Politics in Germany.

Explore how fascism, communism, liberal democracy, and the current nationalistic backlash against immigration have all used the popularity of sports to achieve their strategic goals, from the 1936 Nazi Olympics to Germany's 2014 World Cup victory and beyond.

J S X63.37. Spinoza's Philosophical System.

Examine the significance of Benedict de Spinoza's philosophical system.

J S X63.7. Love and the State in Contemporary Israeli Literature.

J S X63.8. Mizrahi Writing in Israel.

J S X63D. Abraham and Abrahamic Religions.

Examines the figure of Abraham as portrayed in the Bible and the reception of that portrayal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

J S X63E. Jewish Voices from Latin America.

Overview of popular Jewish writers from Brazil and Spanish America, with special emphasis on those who portray in their work the situation of the Jewish communities of their respective cities and countries. Conducted in Spanish.

J S X63F. Women and the Holocaust.

Introduction to both the history of Jewish and German women during World War II and the Holocaust, and to women's narratives and self-representations of this period. Historical sources, memoirs, films, and interviews will be used as source material.

J S X64. Topics in History.

J S X64.1. Anti-Semitism in History and Literature.

J S X64.10. The Church and the Jews.

Examination of the complex relationship between the Western Church and Jews over two millenia.

J S X64.11. World War II in Eastern Europe.

Examines the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of communism in postwar Eastern Europe.

J S X64.13. Origins of Monotheism.

J S X64.14. Austin Jews in the Civil Rights Era.

J S X64.15. The Five Books of Moses.

Study the socio-historical circumstances that gave shape to the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Examine how these five books achieved the status of sacred literature.

J S X64.16. Jews: Nation or People.

J S X64.17. Restitution and Restorative Justice after the Holocaust.

Examine attempts to find a measure of justice after the Holocaust. Explore themes of human rights and international law.

J S X64.18. History of Jewish Thought.

Examine major thinkers and movements in both Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism since the Middle Ages, with a focus on the importance of modern Jewish thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

J S X64.24. Arab Citizens of Israel.

Examine the historical, social, and political processes of change experienced by the Palestinian-Arab community in Israel, including the fundamental aspects pertaining to the founding of Israel as "a Jewish and democratic state" and the relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority.

J S X64.25. The Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Examine the elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the main figures involved, events, and turning-points in its history.

J S X64.26. The Levant: From Colonialism to Coexistence.

Examine the history of the Levant, a region that includes Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

J S X64.27. War and Genocide: The Holocaust.

Examine the Holocaust as part of Nazi Germany's quest to build a new racial order.

J S X64.28. Legacies of World War II in Eastern Europe.

Examine the complex and dynamic legacies of World War II and questions of memory, identity, and politics from 1945 to the present.

J S X64.29. History of Sephardi Jews.

Examine the early-modern networks established by the Sephardi Jews (Sephardim) across the Mediterranean and Atlantic, the rich Ladino Judeo-Spanish culture that thrived in the Ottoman Empire, and Sephardi encounters with the modern world.

J S X64.3. The Bible and History.

The critical uses of biblical and extrabiblical data in the reconstruction of the history of the biblical period.

J S X64.30. Religions in the Ottoman Empire.

Examine Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire (fourteenth to twentieth centuries), with a focus on dynamics both within and between the communities.

J S X64.4. The Dead Sea Scrolls.

J S X64.5. The Spanish Inquisition.

J S X64.7. Jews of Eastern Europe.

Explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.

J S X64.8. Southeast Europe in the Twentieth Century.

Explores the key events and developments of Southeastern Europe, the region commonly referred to as the Balkans, in the twentieth century.

J S X64.9. Spinoza and Modernity.

Introduction to the core of Spinoza's writings and the diverse reactions they have elicited. Examines Spinoza's refusal of mind-body dualism, as well as a transcendent god or ideal as a way of understanding Spinoza's concepts and ideas.

J S X65. Topics in the Social Sciences.

J S X65.1. America and the Holocaust.

J S X65.10. Israel: Society and Politics.

Analysis of Israeli politics and society in a comparative perspective with a major focus on the social and political cleavages in Israel.

J S X65.11. Representation of Jews in the American Public Sphere.

Examines how Jews have been represented and constituted in American public culture as a race, religion, and/or nation through distinct institutions and display practices.

J S X65.12. American Jewish Material Culture.

Examines the interplay between material culture and Jewish identity and thought in contemporary America.

J S X65.13. Anti-Semitism.

Surveys trends in Judeophobia/anti-Semitism over 2,500 years in both Christian and non-Christian societies. Designed to use anti-Semitism as way to explore more general ideas in social theory such as boundary making; models of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflict; and the role of intellectual and scientific elites.

J S X65.14. Holocaust Aftereffects.

Explores the historical, political, psychological, theological, and cultural fallout of the Holocaust, as well as literary and cinematic responses in Europe and the United States.

J S X65.16. Jewish Cuba.

J S X65.17. Spatializing Culture.

J S X65.18. Contemporary Jerusalem.

Explore what life is like in today's contested, rapidly growing, and increasingly diverse Jerusalem.

J S X65.19. Archaeology of Jesus's World.

Explore archaeological methods in examining texts and artifacts from first century CE.

J S X65.4. Jewish Immigrant Culture in America.

J S X65C. Multicultural Israel.

Examines the complex social fabric that comprises contemporary Israeli society, and that shapes Israeli identity, practice and politics.

J S X65D. Cultural Geographies of Israel.

Examines critical spatial theory, landscape phenomenology, histories of Zionist architecture and urban planning as applied to Israel from the Yishuv period to the present.

J S X75. Senior Seminar.

Intensive study and research on selected topics in Jewish studies, with on-going, in-class presentations for critique by fellow students and the instructor.

J S X79H. Honors Tutorial Course.

Supervised individual reading and research for one semester, followed by writing a substantial honors thesis during the second semester.