Winter 2006

  

10 weeks
Jan 9th - March 17th All classes open for credit or non-credit.

Registration required, community fees available at 503.725.4832.
For syllabi or questions, contact instructors by email.

* NEW COURSES

Judaism is a religion of ancient ties to a foundational text, a land, a people, and a way of life. It is also a world civilization that has undergone profound and surprising changes in its more than 3,000 year history. In this introduction to Judaism we will explore this culture's continuities and transformations, from its Biblical origins to the variety of its modern forms. No prerequisites.

Focusing on Saul, David, and Solomon, the course examines power, charisma, and sexuality in ancient Israel, using Biblical texts and commentaries in translation and work by historians, archaeologists, and scholars of gender. Topics include: relations of priest, prophet, king, sage; women as leaders, Hellenistic interpretations (Philo, Josephus), and post-modern readings of Scripture.

The course traces the dispersion of twentieth-century Jewish literature, culture, and politics from the Yiddish of the Eastern European shtetl through its encounters with modernity in the United States, Palestine, the Soviet Union, and Latin America. Through poems, short stories, novels, and films, we consider comparatively how these destinations shaped the fortunes, directions, and central debates in contemporary Jewish life.

How has a religious and ethnic minority responded to the challenges and opportunities of the open society? How are traditions of belief and practice reshaped and redefined in the modern American context? How has American Jewry contributed to and shaped the meaning of what it is to be American? Through historical readings, film, fiction, essays, sociological studies, memoirs, and sound recordings, we will explore the American Jewish experience, with particular emphasis on cultural, religious, and political developments since 1945. Topics include immigrant culture and memory; antisemitism; postwar affluence and migration; the Jewish counterculture; liberalism, radicalism, and neoconservativism; American Zionism; feminism and the transformation of women's roles; the revival of orthodoxy.

Second in a three-course introductory sequence for study of grammar and syntax, reading, writing, and speaking. For non-native speakers of Hebrew. Non-credit fee $300.

First in a three-course intermediate sequence for study of grammar and syntax, reading, writing, and speaking. Prerequisite: Heb 201 or equivalent. For non-native speakers of Hebrew. Non-credit fee $300.

Cultural anthropology of contemporary Middle East, including Israeli women, the kibbutz, and Russian immigrants.

Explores the concept of race in the English Renaissance using plays by Shakespeare (Othello, The Merchant of Venice), Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, and Elizabeth Cary. Key questions are

1. how did a concern with physical differences between ethnic groups play into a general theatrical and cultural obsession with disguise and the revelation of true identity?
   
2. how did the depiction of differences between Christians, Jews, and Muslims relate to religious controversies stemming from the Reformation and changing ideas of the East?
   
3. what role did ideas of gender, sexuality, and physical beauty play in depictions of ethnic difference?
   
4. why are the villains of many Renaissance plays religious or national outsiders whose plights are often portrayed with sympathy? And
   
5. can we locate some of the origins of our own racial categories in the forms of difference dramatized on the English Renaissance stage?

Study of the kinds of literature found in the Bible with attention to the ways in which Biblical expression reflects the cultural and historical milieu of the Jewish-Christian experience.

19th and 20th century history of Palestine and Israel with attention to major cultural, socioeconomic, and political transformations. Surveys a range of interpretations by contemporary scholars.

For program and placement information, contact Professors Robert Liebman liebmanr@pdx.edu or Michael Weingrad weingrad@pdx.edu.