As you register for courses, keep in mind that these courses below count towards the JS minor for the general track, and some count towards the social science track of the JS minor. There are generous scholarships for the winter and summer study abroad programs to Israel, and scholarships that cover full tuition for Hebrew. If you need guidance in completing your minor, please email Director Professor Aronoff at aronoffy@msu.edu
Jewish Studies Minor Courses
All are welcome to enroll in our courses
Spring 2026
For questions about whether any other course counts toward the minor please check with Professor Yael Aronoff at aronoffy@msu.edu.
ESHP 491 Sec. 001: International Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Harry Yuklea Mon, Wed 12:40-2:00PM
Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) are recognized today as the most effective economic growth engines everywhere around the world. Within this context it is imperative for any future manager to understand and acquire operational skills in the various aspects of E&I management from an international perspective, both as competitive landscape and source of opportunities. The course combines the variety of academic perspectives with practitioners’ views, thus making it appropriate both for students interested in pure academic research and for those looking to improve their entrepreneurial skills and knowledgebase for real practice. It will leverage the extended Israeli (known as “The Startup Nation”) accumulated experience in the field by using case studies and interacting occasionally with Israeli practitioners. The first couple of classes will be designated to introduce, understand and discuss the E&I internationalization phenomenon within the context of fundamental theories and models taught in other classes (ideation, planning, competitiveness, economics, finance and IP). Students are required to leverage the knowledge acquired in other classes and actively participate in the open debates around the subjects presented. The second module of the course will consist of a series of case studies, including guest speaker lectures, that emphasize the theoretical background connection to real practice. In the third module we shall deal with recent and expected developments in the field (impact of AI, international trade policies, labor mobility, etc.) Most classes will run in-person, while international speakers’ lectures will be over zoom.
FI 491 Sec. 011: Economics/Finance Innovation
Harry Yuklea Tue, Thu 2:20-3:40PM
Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) is known as the most effective growth engine in modern economies, making it an imperative management skill requirement. Although the foundations of the course reside in the classical financial theory, the higher risk factor, information asymmetry and capital access constraints lead to development of specific models and instruments that mitigate these gaps. This Special Topics in Finance course aims to complement the EC491 and FI444 courses by adding specific modules like global financing, capacity planning, emerging financing instruments, policy design, etc. The course combines the variety of academic perspectives with practitioners’ views, making it appropriate both for students interested in pure academic research and for those looking to improve their entrepreneurial skills and knowledge base for field practice. Within this context, we will leverage the experience accumulated in the Israeli ecosystem, recognized as “The Startup Nation,” using REAL cases as base for analyzing their relevance for other economies, in particular for Michigan.
HEB 102: Elementary Hebrew – 4 credits
Yore Kedem Mon-Thu 9:10-10:00AM
Further work on spoken and written Hebrew for conversation, reading, and research. Further basic grammatical analysis of modern Hebrew.
HEB 202: Second-year Hebrew – 4 credits
Yore Kedem Mon-Thu 10:20-11:10AM
Further intermediate level spoken and written Hebrew for conversation, reading, and research. Further advanced grammatical analysis of modern Hebrew.
HST 388: WWII Causes, Conduct, and Consequences – 3 credits
Matthew Pauly Tue, Thu 3:00-4:20PM
This course will broaden our understanding of the Second World War by considering the war in multiple European theatres of combat and the perspective of different belligerents. It will give particular attention to the Soviet German conflict and events in Eastern Europe to underscore their importance to the outcome of the war. The course does not offer a strict account of battlefield movements but rather seeks to explore how soldiers and civilians alike experienced the war by examining primary accounts (including those by Soviet Jews) of their participation. By focusing on the European context of a global war, it aims to better introduce students to blur the divide between the battlefront and the home front.
HST 392: History of the Holocaust – 3 credits
Karrin Hanshaw Tue, Thu 2:40-4:00PM
Nazi persecution and genocide in Europe, 1933-1945. Jewish experience within broader context. Perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and resistors. Post-Holocaust memory, film, literature, and philosophical implications.
IAH 207 Sec. 021: Literatures, Cultures, Identities – Monsters in Film and Literature – 4 credits
Vered Weiss Tue, Thu 12:40-2:30PM
The twenty-first century has seen a surge in depictions of monsters in films and literature, from the extraordinary success of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises to Godzilla. What is the allure of monsters and why do we enjoy this kind of fear? What do monsters represent, and what hidden desires and anxieties do they allow authors and filmmakers to express? Throughout the eras and in every culture, we find variations of monstrous creatures that embody social boundaries, norms, and values. The course explores literary and cinematic texts that represent a variety of heroes, anti-heroes, monsters and others. We will review how these characters construct the notions of the “I” and the “other” and how they reflect cultural paradigms and socio-political changes. We will also read Kafka, and Asimov, and the Golem, as well as two other short stories by Israeli authors, and watch the Israeli tv show Juda.
IAH 211C: Area Studies and Multicultural Civilizations: The Americas – American Jewish Culture – 4 credits
Matthew Kaufman Mon, Wed 12:40-2:30PM
This class is designed to help students reflect on the significance of culture and how it structures and gives meaning to experience. It will introduce students to key issues and debates in modern American Jewish culture, with particular attention paid to ways in which Jewish identity is constructed and contested. Students will develop an appreciation for the diverse ways in which Jewish culture creates community and provides an interpretive framework for living. Students will come to appreciate how culture is continually created.
IAH 221C Great Ages: The Modern World – Human Migration: A Global Issue from Local Perspectives – 4 credits
Yore Kedem Tue, Thu 12:40-2:30PM
Focus: Human Migration: A Global Issue from Local Perspectives. Arts and humanities of the modern world, examined through the frame of urban and intellectual life. Literature, visual arts, music, religion and philosophy presented in historical context.
IAH 231A Sec. 007: Themes and Issues: Human Values and the Arts and Humanities – Twentieth Century Jewish Israeli and Jewish American Women Writers – 4 credits
Vered Weiss Tue, Thu 10:20-12:10PM
This course surveys Jewish American and Jewish Israeli women writing by focusing on the effects and influences of gender, ethnicity, race, historical experience, religion, class, and cultural practice. Students will explore a spectrum of Jewish American and Jewish Israeli women writing considering themes and issues pertinent to a global tradition of women’s writing. Among others, we will read All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 by Shelly Oria, and Gowing Up Below Sea Level by Rachel Biale.
IAH 241G Sec. 002: Creative Arts and Humanities: Film and Culture – Israeli Cinema and Television – 4 credits
Vered Weiss Tue, Thu 8:00-9:50AM
Through academic engagement with Israeli cinema and television, this course opens a window into the beauty and complexities of Israeli society. We will explore the plurality and diversity of Israeli society, which encompasses various sociopolitical, cultural communities. This course considers the various ways the filmic medium has portrayed Israel’s complex matrix of cultural identities. The different sessions address some of the major factors shaping Israeli culture (e.g., immigration; the regional conflict; gender politics; and queer identities).
MC324a: Regional Politics, Cooperation, and Conflict in the Middle East – 4 credits
Yael Aronoff Tue-Thu 10:20-11:10AM
This course will focus on the causes for conflict and cooperation between states, within states, and between state and non-state actors, in the modern Middle East. One focus of the course will be on conflict/wars and efforts at cooperation between Syria and Israel, Lebanon, and Israel, and especially Palestine and Israel. Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We will focus on the main actors in negotiations between Israel and Syria, Israel and Palestine, and Israel and Lebanon, as well as the role of the United States, regional actors, and the international community in facilitating negotiations. All three dyads of conflict have included violent conflict, as well as periods of serious negotiation. We will examine conditions for conflict and cooperation as they relate to non-state actors involved, as well as state actors. We will discover how amid violent conflict unofficial negotiations can pave the way to cooperation and official negotiation and what the conditions are for successful negotiations. The cases allow for a greater understanding of the domestic and foreign policies of these countries immersed in conflict and enable comparisons of different types of conflict and cooperation. One of the books for the course will be Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, 5th Edition, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2023). There will be simulations, policy memos, and a research paper.
MC 202 Sec. 008: Intro to Study of Public Affairs: From Ethnic Diversity to Ethnic Cleansing: The Transformation of Vilnius (1920-1944) – 4 credits
Sherman Garnett Tue, Thu 3:00-4:50PM
This writing-intensive, research seminar will focus on the city of Vilnius (Lithuania) and its surrounding region from its incorporation into Poland in the aftermath of the First World War until Soviet liberation of the city from the Nazis (1920-1944). For many of you, Vilnius and its region are a blank slate. My primary aim in this course is not to convert you into scholars of the region but to use the city and the region around it as providing case studies of virtually every central issue of politics, economic development, international relations, social movements, war, and interethnic and religious conflict that bedevil us today. In 1920, Vilnius became a contested part of the new Polish state. It was at that time an historically important, ethnically diverse and culturally rich city of Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Belarussians, Russians, Germans, and other groups. The largest of these groups—the Poles and the Jews—looked upon Vilnius (Wilno for Poles, Vilna for the Jews) as a place that helped defined their identity. The Jews considered Vilna the “Jerusalem of the North,” a city rich in religious tradition and learning, as well as the modernizing and secularizing spirit that made it a home for Zionist and Socialist parties and politics. The Poles saw Wilno as a city of poets and baroque churches, a cultural rival to Krakow and Warsaw. By 1948, these groups were gone, the Jews in the Holocaust and the Poles in the postwar Communist rearranging of ethnic groups. Yet the history of the city from 1920 to 1939 is one of complicated interethnic cooperation, friction, and even violence. The different communities within the city were divided by a diversity of religious and secular orientations, political parties, and a strong urban-rural divide. Each had been influenced by modern nationalist notions of a community, as well as fascist and communist ideologies. Vilnius became a testing ground for a Polish political struggle as nationalist, antisemitic, and authoritarian elements in Polish politics gained greater sway. These political conditions and a poor economy, heavily burdened by policies designed to favor ethnic Poles, the Great Depression and the closure of borders with both Lithuania and the USSR, made Vilnius a source of a steady stream of economic, intellectual, and political emigrants to Warsaw, to Paris, to the United States, to what was then Palestine, and to the Soviet Union. But as Vilnius and the surrounding region suffered from a range of internal problems, its external environment worsened. Relations between Poland and Lithuania were frozen over who should own Vilnius, while large and increasingly hostile neighbors, the Soviet Union and, after 1933, Nazi Germany, threatened the independence of both Poland and Lithuania. These militarized and authoritarian states with different but equally radical notions of social transformation eventually did bring war, military occupation, annexation, and the Holocaust to the region. We are fortunate that we can approach these important issues and this amazing city through the works of major Yiddish and Polish writers (Chaim Grade, Abraham Sutzkever, and Czesław Miłosz), social historians, memoirs and chronicles, films, and photographs. In parallel to our intellectual inquiry, we will come to know the building blocks of conceiving, writing, organizing, and writing a research paper. This introduction to the city of Vilnius in this crucial period will provide you both intellectual and writing foundations for the remainder of your Madison career and beyond.
REL 310: Judaism – 3 credits
Laura Yares Mon, Wed 1:00-2:20PM
This course explores the construction of Judaism throughout the long course of Jewish history. It takes as a presumption that there is no one “Judaism” that is normal and normative – rather, throughout Jewish history Jews have thought about, created, and re-created what Judaism is all about relative to their time and place. Beginning with the earliest texts of the Hebrew Bible, our course will begin in the Ancient Near East, and take us to Iran, Spain, North Africa, and Europe, before landing in the contemporary United States. The paradigmatic story of the Jewish people, a story that is told each year during the Passover Seder, is the story of the exodus from Egypt. Our course will build towards a final assignment in which you will analyze a Haggadah (the ritual text of the Passover seder) from the MSU library’s special collection. In this course, and through this final assignment, you will learn about the ways that different Jewish people have negotiated their own understandings of Jewish ritual, Jewish history, and Jewish religion, and have told stories about belonging, liberation, freedom, and responsibility.
UGS 201 Sec. 740: Historical and Contemporary Antisemitism – 1 credit
Morgan Shipley Asynchronous 1/12/2026-03/06/2026
This seminar will afford students from across the university the opportunity to learn about the historical roots and contexts of contemporary antisemitism, to define antisemitism, and to identify key tropes in the history of antisemitism. Antisemitism is at historic levels in the United States, and we know some students have also experienced it on our campus. This course will help students recognize antisemitism and understand its historical roots. Class is primarily online asynchronous with attendance required at one of three in-person events. While this course is ordinarily restricted to first- and second-year students, requests for overrides for juniors and seniors may be granted by emailing lucasaly@msu.edu and robil233@msu.edu.
Fall 2026
For questions about whether any other course counts toward the minor please check with Professor Yael Aronoff at aronoffy@msu.edu.
ENG 356: Readings in Jewish Literature (3 credits)
Instructor: Stephen Rachman
Meeting times: Mon Wed 10:20-11:40AM
Description: This course sets out to explore English-language-based Jewish-American writing in global literary-historical contexts. The last decades have seen a virtual explosion of important and interesting works by writers of Jewish backgrounds writing in American and global literary traditions. This writing ranges from sophisticated work from major established literary figures like Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick to newer writers like Nicole Krauss, Dara Horn, and Nathan Englander. It reflects both a flowering of literary creativity and a cultural moment in which the lineaments of Jewish-American culture and tradition are being contested, re-imagined, and redrawn in global and historical terms. During the term we will read six recent works using a variety of shorter texts (stories and essays) as points of reference in the history of Jewish-American culture as it has emerged in the U.S. and in global literary context. We will also have recourse to several landmark films addressing Jewish-American experience and themes.
HEB 101: Elementary Hebrew (4 credits)
Instructor: Yore Kedem
Meeting times: Mon Tue Wed Thu 9:10-10:00AM
Description: Introduction to spoken and written Hebrew for conversation, reading, and research. Basic grammatical analysis of modern Hebrew.
HEB 101 Section 2: Elementary Hebrew (4 credits)
Instructor: Yore Kedem
Meeting times: Tue and Thu 2:30-4:30PM
Description: Introduction to spoken and written Hebrew for conversation, reading, and research. Basic grammatical analysis of modern Hebrew.
HEB 201: Second year Hebrew (4 credits)
Instructor: Yore Kedem
Meeting times: Mon Tue Wed Thu 10:20-11:10AM
Description: Intermediate level spoken and written Hebrew for conversation, reading, and research. Advanced grammatical analysis of modern Hebrew.
HST 317: American Jewish History (3 credits)
Instructor: Kirsten Fermaglich
Meeting times: Mon Wed 3:00-4:20PM
Description: American Jewish history from colonial period to present. Jewish immigration to the United States, patterns of religious and cultural adjustment, social relations and anti-Semitism, Jewish politics, the construction of Jewish identities.
HST 392: History of the Holocaust (3 credits)
Instructor: Karrin Hanshew
Meeting times: Tue Thu 1:00-2:20PM
Description: Nazi persecution and genocide in Europe, 1933-1945. Jewish experience within broader context. Perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and resistors. Post-Holocaust memory, film, literature, and philosophical implications.
HST 411: European Jewish History (3 credits)
Instructor: Andreas Bouroutis
Meeting times: Tue Thu 1:00-2:20PM
Description: The main focus of your historical exposure will be the diverse and dynamin Jewish communities in Europe. By examining the rich cultural, religious, economic and social history of the various communities you will be introduced in the great transformations of the European continent. What do we know about the Sephardi Jews of the Iberian Peninsula and why they had been exiled from their motherland? Where did they end? How Ashkenazi Jews shaped their identities in the various lands and what do we know about the Greek Romaniote Jews? Since Greece was a quite homogenous society with the vast majority of the population being Orthodox Christians, it’s a challenge for you to detect how a different religious group, the Jews, found its way to daily life. Hence, you will research the various ways that Jewish communities shaped both their religious affiliation and their identity through historical time.
IAH 207-038: Literatures, Cultures, Identities (4 credits)
Focus: Monsters and Monstrous
Instructor: Vered Weiss
Meeting times: Mon Wed 3:00-4:50PM
Description: The twenty-first century has seen a surge in depictions of monsters in films and literature, from the extraordinary success of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises to Godzilla. What is the allure of monsters and why do we enjoy this kind of fear? What do monsters represent, and what hidden desires and anxieties do they allow authors and filmmakers to express? Throughout the eras and in every culture, we find variations of monstrous creatures that embody social boundaries, norms, and values. The course explores literary and cinematic texts that represent a variety of heroes, anti-heroes, monsters and others. We will review how these characters construct the notions of the “I” and the “other” and how they reflect cultural paradigms and socio-political changes. This is a team-taught course, which offers students the opportunities to work collaboratively on interdisciplinary projects with students from ISS, ISB and IAH.
IAH 211D-001: Area Studies and Multicultural Civilizations: The Middle East (4 credits)
Focus: Israeli Speculative Fiction
Instructor: Vered Weiss
Meeting times: Tue Thu 10:20-12:10PM
Description: The course invites students to enter conversations about Israeli culture that go beyond discourses about what is real, and encounter, instead, discussions about how Israelis use speculative fiction to imagine what might be. Recognizing the significance of speculative literature in the reconfiguration of modern Israeli identities, the course outlines some of the main elements that locate Israeli speculative fiction in relation to world speculative literature on the one hand, and features that render it unique on the other. Offering an overview of Israeli speculative fiction, the course exposes the diversity of Israeli speculative literature production. The course explores texts by Etgar Keret, Assaf Gavron, Lavie Tidhar, Orly Castel-Bloom, Keren Landsman, Rotem Baruchin and Elana Gomel, among others.
IAH 241G-002: Creative Arts and Humanities: Film and Culture (4 credits)
Focus: Israeli Cinema and Television
Instructor: Vered Weiss
Meeting Times: Tue Thu 12:40-2:30PM
Description: Through academic engagement with Israeli cinema and television, this course opens a window into the beauty and complexities of Israeli society. We will explore the plurality and diversity of Israeli society, which encompasses various sociopolitical, cultural communities. This course considers the various ways the filmic medium has portrayed Israel’s complex matrix of cultural identities. The different sessions address some of the major factors shaping Israeli culture (e.g., immigration; the regional conflict; gender politics; and queer identities).
ISS 325 Lec 1: War and Revolution (4 credits)
Instructor: Andreas Bouroutis
Meeting times: Tue Thu Fri 10:20-11:40AM
Description: “Nobody is so fool to prefer war than peace. In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons”- Herodotus
“In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end” – Alexis de Tocqueville.
How War and Revolution changed human societies across the globe? What was the impact for social changes and how did they interact in the making of modern nation states?
Course ISS 325 War and Revolution stretches from the American and the French Revolution to the World Wars, the Cold War and the recent conflicts. How the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine was succeeded by the Russian invasion and war of 2022? How conflicts affect people and nations creating migration and refugee waves? What kinds of expectations arise during revolutions and how do they really end?
The course is a fascinating journey in time that presents the tectonic periods that changed humanity in the depth of time till today’s world. It examines how war and revolution mingled in the destruction of empires, the making of nation states, encouraged nationalism, reorganized social classes and crafted people identities. Moreover, this course aims to encompass different fields of human performance (daily life, social and economic activities, cultural performance) and to expose how conflicts affect people’s lives.
Major events will work as landmarks for in depth analysis over the causes, the action and the consequences of periods of political and social upheaval. At a second layer the course will elaborate in the response and treatment of certain groups during turmoil periods, like the Jews in Europe. How Jews were emancipated after the French Revolution and how were they targeted by antisemitism and long lasting prejudices? How did we end with the biggest crime against humanity, the Holocaust? What do we know about the Romaniote Jewish communities in Greece and how their presence perceived in a homogenous Christian society? Moreover, migration and refugee currents in time will be analyzed based in the certain conditions (wars and revolutions) that they took place and the challenges that marked and changed modern societies through anguish and pain.
Through a variety of case studies, the students will learn how to deal with historical, political and social phenomena (wars, revolutions – national uprisings and nation state building processes, social destruction – reconstruction) and detect how cornerstone events patterned individual and collective action and identities. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able:
To describe the major developments in the history of modern world;
To demonstrate knowledge of historical events and periods of conflicts and upheaval and analyze individual and collective action in its historical context;
To produce arguments explaining such events and developments, their causes, effects and long-term repercussions; and
To understand how major events affect ordinary people and daily life.
MC 335 Sec. 301: Israeli Politics, Cultures and Society (4 credits)
Instructor: Alon Tal
Meeting times: Tue Thu 4:00-7:00PM
Description: Analysis of Israeli politics and society. Relationship between society and: social and ethnic cleavages, culture and politics, political institutions and parties, political contestation, and democracy and the Jewish nature of the state. The course engages the mutual influences of domestic politics and foreign policy, and the influence of regional and international dynamics on domestic policy. The course seeks to familiarize students with and present critical perspectives on a range of issues associated with modern Israeli life including: its geopolitics, its parliamentary democracy and threats to it, demography, economics, the environment, as well as the complex history of past efforts to reach peace agreements, as well as varied perspectives on its wars. The class will include guest experts who join via zoom from the Middle East and include a simulation.
MC 387: Jews and Antisemitism (4 Credits)
Instructor: Amy Simon
Meeting times: Mon Wed 10:20-11:40AM
Description: MC 387 studies antisemitism both as a pressing problem in contemporary public affairs and as “the longest hatred,” a stubborn prejudice that has persisted for thousands of years. Since the beginning of Christianity, Jews have been singled out for persecution by communities in which they lived as a minority. In recent years, antisemitism has surged in the United States and Europe, after having declined in the decades following the Holocaust. We will attempt to understand this troubling phenomenon by examining its history, underlying causes, and contemporary manifestations. The first part of the course studies the history of antisemitism from the rise of Christianity to the Holocaust. We will look at how hostility to Judaism emerged in early Christianity; why antisemitism persisted in modern societies based on equality and individual rights; and how Nazi antisemitism led to the near annihilation of the Jewish population in Europe during the Holocaust. We will also trace the origins of stereotypes about Jewish malevolence, power, and greed; pay particular attention to how different ideologies have been used to justify antisemitism, including traditional religion, western liberalism, Marxism, and pseudo-scientific racism; and consider how Jews have responded to antisemitism both politically and theologically throughout their history. The second part of the course will study contemporary antisemitism with a focus on the United States. We will study the current resurgence of antisemitism both in light of the history of antisemitism and by trying to understand its more immediate causes. We will consider how antisemitism plays a role in the ideology of new right-wing movements, as well as sources of antisemitism on the political left. We will pay particular attention to the connection between the creation of the State of Israel and increasing antisemitism worldwide, and current debates over the relation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
MC 459: Science, Technology, Environment and Public Policy Capstone: Climate Change and Public Policy, Interdepartmental course with Lyman Briggs (3 credits)
Instructor: Alon Tal
Meeting times: Tue Thu 12:00-3:00PM
Description: A growing global consensus recognizes that in order to avert an acute climate disaster, the world’s economy must transition to one with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the International Energy Agency projects that half of the technologies required to reach carbon neutrality have not yet been invented or are not yet operational. Climate change mitigation policies worldwide, therefore, must have two parallel, overarching objectives: accelerated emissions reduction and climate tech development. This course considers the form and content that climate policies should take as well as implementation strategies to mitigate greenhouse ga emissions and accelerate technological innovation to attain net-zero emission targets. The course begins with an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of different regulatory approaches to technological innovation. The course then considers the international context for conducting domestic climate policies, the evolution and expectations of the United Climate Convention. Subsequently, attention turns to a range of policy interventions that have been employed to pursue climate mitigation objectives and climate tech innovation. These include funding research, monetizing carbon through carbon taxes and emission trading systems, subsidizing climate technology deployment through feed-in tariffs and carbon contracts for differences, technology forcing standards, command and control oversight, green public procurement policies and choice architecture “nudges”. Specific examples of global and national regulatory dynamics that affect technology development are discussed in areas such as renewable energy, energy storage, solid waste reduction, food production, cement and steel production, hydrogen, autonomous/ electric vehicles, shipping, and the fashion industry. Relevant experiences of different countries will be presented, especially from Israel, the US and from Denmark. The course is also designed to be a capstone, where students will break into groups to prepare a report for an Israeli NGO as part comparative regulatory analysis. The course material for the final quiz will be based on instructor’s lectures, required readings, and guest presentations.
MC 492 Sec. 004: Senior Seminar in International Relations (5 credits)
Focus: Peacemaking and Peacebuilding
Instructor: Yael Aronoff
Meeting times: Tue Thu 12:40-2:30PM
Description: This seminar will concentrate on peacebuilding and peacemaking efforts to resolve long-standing conflicts. Various factors, including grassroots peacebuilding organizations and movements, leaders, peace negotiations and frameworks, and mediation and facilitation by regional and international actors will be examined. In addition, public opinion and the influence of domestic politics on different actors will be examined. The primary case study will be past efforts to negotiate Israeli-Palestinian peace, grassroots peacebuilding efforts, and prospects for future efforts. This course has three main objectives: 1) To hone your research, analytical, and writing skills by conducting a substantial research project of your own. 2) To explore the varied factors that can contribute to making progress in efforts to resolve long-standing conflicts through peacebuilding and peacemaking efforts. 3) To improve your critical thinking, reading, and speaking abilities. Particular attention will be given to developing argumentation skills, both orally and in writing, through written assignments, oral presentations, and in class discussions and simulations.
MC 498 Sec. 001: Senior Seminar in Social Relations (5 credits)
Focus: The Holocaust in American Memory
Instructor: Amy Simon
Meeting times: Mon Wed 12:40-2:30PM
Description: American social relations and policy. Analysis of the Holocaust and comparative genocides. During the course of this class, we will discuss questions such as: How does the Holocaust live on in American remembrance? Why should the United States be so invested in the memory of a European genocide? What kinds of stories do Americans tell about the Holocaust?
REL 150: Exploring Biblical Literature (3 credits)
Instructor: Christopher Frillingos
Meeting times: Mon Wed Thu 1:00-2:20PM
Description: A critical survey of biblical texts, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and writings found in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon, that combines historical and literary analysis with attention to the ancient religious context of this literature.
REL 412: Jewish Mysticism (3 credits)
Instructor: Morgan Shipley
Meeting times: Mon Wed 8:30-9:50AM
Description: Introduction to the doctrines, ritual practices, and history of Jewish mysticism
UGS 201 Historical and Contemporary Antisemitism (1 credit)
Instructor: Morgan Shipley
Meeting times: Asynchronous
Description: online asynchronous, featuring short video lectures by Professor Yael Aronoff, Professor Kirsten Fermaglich, Professor Chris Frilingos, Professor Mary Juzwick, Professor Amy Simon, and Professor Laura Yares. This seminar will afford students from across the university the opportunity to learn about the historical roots and contexts of contemporary antisemitism, to define antisemitism, and to identify key tropes in the history of antisemitism. Antisemitism is at historic levels in the United States, and some students have also experienced it on our campus. This course will help students recognize antisemitism and understand its historical roots.