Jewish Civilization III - Jewish Spaces and Places, Imagined and Real

Undergraduate / Graduate

What makes a ghetto, a ghetto? What defines a Jewish neighborhood? What determined the architectural form of synagogues? Taught in Special Collections in Regenstein Library and making extensive use of the textual and visual sources there, this course will analyze how Jews (in all their diversity) and non-Jews defined Jewish spaces and places. Sources will include: Jewish law and customary practice, cookbooks, etiquette guides, prints, films, novels, maps, memoirs, architectural drawings and photographs, and tourist guides. We may also take a field trip to the Oak Woods Cemetery. The focus will be on Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, but we will also venture back into the early modern period and across the Mediterranean to Palestine/Israel and North Africa and the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas. We will study both actually existing structures and texts and visual culture in which Jewish places and spaces are imagined or vilified. Parallel to our work with primary sources we will read in the recent, very rich, scholarly literature on this topic. This is not a survey course; we will undertake a series of intensive case-studies through which we will address the larger issues. Assignments include: presentations (individual or collaborative), short papers, Canvas postings, and there will also be the option of making a digital map or an on-line exhibition. This is a limited-enrollment, discussion-based course. No previous knowledge of Jewish history is expected.