Courses:
Yiddish
2008-2009
First-Year Sequence
Elementary Yiddish for Beginners I, II, and III.
The goal of this sequence is to develop proficiency in reading, writing, listening and speaking for use in everyday communication. The courses will introduce the main features of Yiddish culture through websites, songs, films and folklore. Fall, Winter and Spring. 2008-2009
Intermediate Yiddish I, II, and III
This
is a three-quarter sequence of Intermediate Yiddish. A variety of
material will be used to expose students to different styles of written
and spoken Yiddish. Course materials include a selection of modern
Yiddish literature (short stories and poems) including CDs with
readings by native speakers; newspaper articles; and websites about
Yiddish cultural life in the US, Europe and Israel. TEXTBOOK: Valencia,
Heather (compiler and editor), With Great Pleasure: A Century of
Yiddish Writing (The London Jewish Cultural Centre, 2002). Fall, Winter
and Spring 2008-2009.
Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow:
Jewish Novelists of the Twentieth Century
The course will examine the novels of two of the most important Jewish
novelists of the twentieth century. Isaac Bashevis Singer’s debut Satan
in Goray (1933) was followed by novels in various sub-genres: family
chronicle, historical, and autobiographical. Saul Bellow’s main
contribution was also as a novelist from his debut Dangling Man (1944)
to Ravelstein (2000). Using current methodological approaches to
the novel in Franco Moretti’s The Novel (2006), we will discuss how
Bellow and Singer reshaped novelistic forms and styles. The goal of the
course is to develop a hermeneutics of the Jewish novel in the
twentieth century. Winter 2009.
Jewish History and Society III: Jewish
Life-Writing in the Modern World
Life-writing
broadly defined as diaries, personal letters, memoirs, autobiographies,
fictionalized life stories, personal wills etc. enables us to enter the
subjective dimension of history and examine how individuals make sense
of their lives, and the rapid changes in the modern world. In a Jewish
context, the emancipation that began with the French revolution in
1789, spread to German lands and gradually also made inroads in Jewish
Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century gave rise to
retrospective accounts in the form of life-writing in various languages
and genres. The most important Jewish autobiography from this period,
Solomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte (1786) articulated an Eastern
European Jew’s quest for secular knowledge and bildung (education).
Spring 2009.
Introduction to Yiddish Language and Culture
The
goal is to provide the students with a fundamental knowledge of Yiddish
grammar and vocabulary, so they will be able to read Yiddish texts for
research. While the course does not teach conversational Yiddish, the
basic elements of pronunciation will be introduced. The course will
examine the main features of Yiddish culture in its various centers in
Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, the Soviet Union
and Israel. A segment of the course will focus on reading Yiddish texts
for Holocaust research. Summer 2009.
Courses:
2009-2010
First-Year Sequence
In
this three-quarter sequence, the students will develop proficiency in
reading, writing, listening and speaking for use in everyday
communication. The courses will introduce the main features of Yiddish
culture through websites, songs, films and folklore. Fall, Winter and
Spring. 2009-2010
Intermediate Yiddish I, II and III
In this three-quarter sequence of Intermediate Yiddish, a variety of material will be used to expose students to different styles of written and spoken Yiddish. Course materials include a selection of modern Yiddish literature (short stories and poems) including CDs with readings by native speakers; newspaper articles; and websites about Yiddish cultural life in the US, Europe and Israel. Fall, Winter and Spring. 2009-2010.
Modern Yiddish Literature: Diaspora and Homecoming
YDDH 25000, YDDH 35000,
GRMN 25007, GRMN 35000
This course will give a survey of Yiddish tales, short stories, monologues, plays, novels and life-writing from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the topics addressed are Yiddish humor and satire, literary modernism, the classical Yiddish writers’ image of the shtetl (small Jewish town in Central and Eastern Europe) and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s demons and imps. Readings are by Sh. Y. Abramovitsh, Y.L.Peretz. Scholem-Aleichem, Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister, Jonah Rosenfeld, I.B.Singer, Chaim Grade, Ester Kreytman, Chava Rosenfarb, Yankev Glathsteyn and Sh. Ansky. All texts will be read in English translation. Fall 2009
Jewish American Literature
YDDH 27800, YDDH 37800,
GRMN 27800, GRMN 37800, ENGL 25004, ENGL 45002, CMLT 29800, CMLT 39800
The goal of the course is to expand the conception of the field of Jewish American literature from English-only to English-plus. The course will examine how Yiddish literary models and styles influenced the emergence and development of Jewish American literature, and discuss how recent Jewish American novels have renewed the engagement with the Yiddish literary tradition. Readings are by Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, I.B.Singer, Chaim Grade, Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, Jonathan Safran Foer, Pearl Abraham and Dara Horn. Winter 2010
Jewish History and Society III: Jewish Life-Writing in the Modern World
JWSC 20003
The
main theme of modern Jewish life-writing is the clash between a
traditional life based on a theological belief system, and modernity,
the secularization of the world that took place as a result of
emancipation and enlightenment (Haskalah). Jewish life-writing was made
possible by the historical and critical discourse that also gave rise
to Wissenschaft des Judentums (the science of Judaism; Jewish studies)
in Germany in the early nineteenth century. The impetus to critically
examine the past in order to negotiate Jewish identity in the present
finds its paradigmatic expression in Jewish life-writing. This course
will examine works of Jewish life-writing written in Yiddish, Hebrew,
Russian, English and German. All primary and secondary readings will be
in English. The course will examine the following questions: 1) how are
self formation and life narrative conceived in Jewish life-writing; 2)
what are the distinctions between life-writing in Jewish and non-Jewish
languages; 3) how can the public act of life-writing, its production
and reader reception, be viewed as an integral part of the
secularization of Jewish life?
Introduction to Yiddish Language and Culture
The goal is to provide the students with a fundamental knowledge of Yiddish grammar and vocabulary, so they will be able to read Yiddish texts for research. While the course does not teach conversational Yiddish, the basic elements of pronunciation will be introduced. The course will examine the main features of Yiddish culture in its various centers in Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, the Soviet Union and Israel. A segment of the course will focus on reading Yiddish texts for Holocaust research. Summer 2010.