Jewish Studies

The roles played by Jews in the development of modern American literature are complex and contradictory. Influential American authors expressed anti-Semitic views in their correspondence and work, and prejudice excluded Jews from many literary and cultural opportunities well into the 20th century. Nonetheless Jewish publishers, editors, critics, and writers were extraordinarily influential in the development of the field, founding leading publishing houses, supporting freedom of expression and movements like modernism and postmodernism, and writing some of the most influential and lasting works in the tradition. In this course, we will explore the ways Jews have been represented in American literature and their roles in modernizing and expanding the field. Fulfills the English Department’s Diversity of Literatures in English requirement. (ENG 270 and JWST 270 are cross-listed courses.)

Traditionally, the study of Judaism has neglected the senses, the body, and emotions as worthy objects of inquiry. This course aims to fill this gap in our conception of Judaism by surveying key Jewish traditions from antiquity to the present through the lenses of sensory studies, new materialism, and affect theory. We will explore, for instance, the centrality of pleasant and foul odors to premodern Israelite religiosity, notions of attention as a bodily experience in medieval Jewish mysticism, and modern debates about love and shame as determining factors in Jewish law. To appreciate the sensory, somatic, and affective realms of Jewish history, we will engage analytical tools that focus on texts’ representation of textures of lived experiences and apply these methods to sources such as the biblical Song of Songs, the talmudic tractate Berakhot (“prayers and blessings”), hassidic tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and Noah Kahan’s Twitter feed. (JWST 212 and REL 212 are cross-listed courses.)