General/Comparative History

• Academic Credits: 3
• SAS Core: HST
• Mode of Instruction: Lecture

• Syllabus:   pdf Spring 2022 (294 KB)

  Syllabus Disclaimer:  The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.

• Cross-listed Course: 01:563:202

• Credit will not be given for both this course and the cross-listed course.

  Course Description

  Modernity posed challenging questions to the Jews, unsettling previously held beliefs and sources of identity. What, moderns—and Jews themselves—asked, are Jews? A religion, a race, a nation, an ethnicity, or a people? What language(s) do they speak, read, and write? To whom do their loyalties belong? To their local community, to the political states or empires in which they reside, to Jews around the world, to a Jewish state, or to all of humanity? What role would traditional religious structures and authority play in the Jews’ encounter with modern values, such as secularization, democracy, gender equality, and religious tolerance? How would Jews respond to new forms of antagonism or hatred against them?

  This course will address these challenges through a survey of the social, economic, political, religious, and cultural history of European and N. American Jewry from the sixteenth century to the present. Topics to be covered include: Marranism and New Christians, the European State and the Jews, the Money Economy and the “Jewish Question,” Jewish autonomy, the political emancipation of the Jews, religious reform, modern antisemitism, nationalism, WWI, Jewish life during the interwar years in both the United States and Europe, WWII, and postwar Jewish life. It will examine the changes in Jewish life engendered by modernity and explore the responses of the Jews to its challenges. Attention will be paid to the regional diversity in the modern Jewish experience, as well as to the nexus between gender and modernization. Primary and secondary readings, including fiction, memoirs, and poetry, will be used.

   

• Academic Credits: 3

• Academic Credits: 3

• Syllabus:    pdf Spring 2022 (57 KB) - Section 03 taught by Prof. Foglesong

  Syllabus Disclaimer:  The information in this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.

• Course is a Pre-requisite for: 01:506:401 History Seminar

Introduction to historical research, analysis, and interpretation. Topical lectures and hands-on workshops. Required for all history majors. 

• Academic Credits: 3
• Mode of Instruction: Lecture

• Syllabus:   pdf Spring 2022 (184 KB)

  Syllabus Disclaimer:  The information on this syllabus is subject to change. For up-to-date course information, please refer to the syllabus on your course site (Sakai, Canvas, etc.) on the first day of class.

• Course Description

  An experiential learning course introducing students to the myriad fields in which historians work, as well as the questions and methods that guide their engagement with history in public life. Utilizing place-based and object-based epistemology, this course explores questions like: How do we know what we know about history? How do the histories that we learn in the classroom differ from those we learn on the street, in the museum, and in government documents? How do public historians grapple with the Confederate monument debate? Why do we preserve historic buildings? How does one explain the history of the women’s suffrage movement in a 100-word statement on a plaque in a town square in a way that could be understood by an eight year old? Does the public consume historical information differently than scholars and students? Who controls the narratives of our histories, and what does that mean for who is and is not included in our retellings of the past? How should we account for power and absences in history? This course includes site visits, hands-on exhibit curation opportunities, and chances to engage with local community history.