During conflict and war, art and architecture are often among the first casualties. Opponents destroy each other’s cultural heritage, or appropriate it. What is the relationship of art and trauma? How do societies reconstruct their heritage after traumatic episodes? This seminar examines instances when works of art and cultural property become involved in conflict: theft, contested ownership, vandalism, restitution, urban renewal. We view instances of conflict as historically situated examples that can reveal how individuals and groups perceive art and architecture, and how institutions and mechanisms for their use, preservation, destruction, commodification or display come into being. This will allow us to consider how sometimes conflicting and mutually exclusive ways of conceiving and using art are present in the worlds of religion, law, art history, museums, commercial art world, international development, nationalism, state institutions, and even criminal networks. The focus on conflict will give us a window onto an “applied” world of art and architectural theory. Part of the seminar will be devoted to the systematic art thefts during the Second World War, and to the Holocaust Restitution Movement as it relates to art and cultural heritage.

Join this Hebrew class and have fun while learning. In Hebrew 003 we will speak, read, write and laugh, while learning the language and the culture. We will add the future form, a new stem (Binyan), some holidays that fall during the quarter, and speak, speak, speak about any subject that is within our vocabulary.

This is a course in comparative history. The class will focus on why European Jews and Black Americans became interested in Palestine and West Africa in the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries ? How did they imagine these lands and interact with the local peoples? Were these territories Terra Nullius or vacuum domicilium? Reading for the course will be posted in the ninth week of the current quarter.

This course explores the early origins of Zionism in the 1880’s, the motivations behind the movement, and the transformation of several disparate grassroots cultural groups into a major political organization demanding the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The central focus of this course is the study of the individuals who lived through both the monumental and everyday experiences that comprise Israeli History as well as those living in Israel today. We will move beyond the news stories to learn about the diverse groups that make up Israel’s population, their religions and culture as well as their political affiliations. We will study the narratives of Israelis and Palestinians as presented in both primary and secondary sources in order to gain a better understanding of their perspective on the events we read about in books and in the newspapers. We will also explore how these different groups go about their daily lives to lend voices to the people associated with the conflict in the Middle East. Finally, this course will include discussions about historical events alongside current events to create a clearer picture of the true roots of today’s Arab-Israeli conflict.

This course deals with the myriad ways the memory of genocide has been constructed in the half century since the event. The goal of the course is to teach students how to analyze critically the way memory shapes and sometimes distorts our images of the past, especially when that past involves a collective trauma that may defy representation. The course is interdisciplinary in nature, involving varied texts from memoirs, literature, film, architecture and philosophy.

This course focuses on the extraordinary contribution of Russian-Jewish writers, filmmakers and artists to Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet culture, as well as to the culture of the Jewish diaspora in the United States and Canada, Israel, and Europe. Chronologically, the literary texts, films and works of visual culture discussed in the course cover the period from the late 19th century to the present day. They also intersect with some of the most cataclysmic historical events of the past century: the Russian Revolution of 1917, which ended the Russian Jews’ seclusion to the Pale of Settlement and allowed them unprecedented educational and professional opportunities in the new Soviet state; and World War II, which led to the near total destruction of the rural segment of the Soviet-Jewish population. The final weeks of the quarter will concentrate on the contributions of contemporary Russian-Jewish émigrés, writing in the language of their adopted homelands while navigating the complexities of crafting a new, hybrid identity. All texts will be read in translation from the original Yiddish, Russian, and German. No knowledge of Russian required.

What does it mean to be a Jew in North America today? Where do Jews “fit” in contemporary US multicultural society? Are those who claim a Jewish identity referring to religion, race, or ethnicity? Who is a Jew? And who defines “who is a Jew?” What challenges confront the future of Jewish identity in the US? This course will use readings and films to explore the complexity of these issues from diverse perspectives. We will analyze some of the attempts made by different groups and communities to form, (re)create and perpetuate Jewish identities. We will examine such issues as: changing historical view and position of Jews in the US, notions of and tensions in the Jewish community, gender and Jewish men and Jewish women, queer Jews, and contemporary trends among young American Jews.

Recent academic research has stressed that Israel is a heterogeneous society. Thus one problematic in the study of Israeli society has centered around this heterogeneity. Scholars have asked such questions as: which groups should be studied as part of Israeli society, how much diversity can a society tolerate without being torn asunder from inside, and what kinds of mechanisms generate loyalty to a state, even under conditions of significant ethnic, lifestyle, and religious differences. In this course, we review contemporary work on Israeli society, including not just the diversity issue, but also other questions that have occupied Israeli sociologists. However, the diversity question provides the course framework. Each week, we read work that seeks to look at Israel from the perspective of a different group that lives in Israel. Since there are more groups in Israel than weeks in a quarter, students vote on the first day of class which groups will be included in this quarter's syllabus. It is also important to note what questions we will not be asking. This is not a course on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; it is a course on identity, though the questions about difference and loyalty to the state obviously have bearing on the conflict.