Jewish Women in Modern Times: Gender and Sexuality

(4 Credits)

This course explores the social, cultural and political histories of Jewish women in modern Europe and the United States from the French Revolution through World War II, focusing on the era of Emancipation, the bourgeois 19th century, both World Wars, and the Holocaust. We will examine the options women had, the boundaries against which they pushed, and the roles they created for themselves in public and in private. Students will read secondary sources as well as memoirs, diaries, and letters.