Graduate Courses in Jewish Studies

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew: Genesis-Deuteronomy

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 42315

M 3:00PM-6:00PM

This seminar involves the reading and analysis of Genesis–Deuteronomy in Hebrew. The Masoretic Text as reproduced in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia will serve as the main text. The Septuagint will be consulted on occasion. Much of the course will be devoted to examining the grammar and syntax of the Tiberian Hebrew in the text and attempting to understand any anomalies that are encountered. Students will also practice pointing unpointed texts from the Pentateuch. In addition, the course will consider the matter of source criticism and the state of current scholarship on that topic, as well as certain literary considerations that are important for reading these texts.
 

HEB 381H Intensive Grad Language Instruction I

Avi Blitz

Unique #: 42320

MWF 9:00AM-11:00AM

Intensive cultural and literacy-focused training in Hebrew at the beginning level in preparation for research with Hebrew sources. Incoming students are placed in the appropriate level by means of a departmental placement test.
 

HEB 381H Intensive Grad Language Instruction I

Esther Raizen

Unique #: 42325

MWF 11:00AM-1:00PM

Intensive cultural and literacy-focused training in Hebrew at the beginning level in preparation for research with Hebrew sources. Incoming students are placed in the appropriate level by means of a departmental placement test.
 

MES 386 Global Gothic
(also listed as C L 381)

Karen Grumberg

Unique #: 42040

M 2:00PM-5:00PM

Global Gothic, World Gothic, International Gothic: scholars affiliated with the field of Gothic Studies have been drawing attention increasingly to the existence of texts that can be seen as “Gothic” but which were authored in languages, places, and periods not conventionally associated with the Gothic. This seminar will consider some of these texts, along with the different approaches, questions, and debates that they have elicited from critics. One of the key questions that will animate our discussions over the course of the semester will be: is it possible, useful, desirable to adapt the Gothic, with its UK provenance, as an analytical category for non-Western literatures? What are the implications of doing so? As the scholarship on Global Gothic proliferates and this important sub-field continues to take shape, we will participate in this conversation in real time and consider how its dilemmas apply to the languages and regions in which students are building expertise. All readings will be accessible in English translation, but students will be encouraged to bring their own languages and literatures into the seminar in their oral presentation; those who can read the required texts in the original will be encouraged to do so.
 

MEL 380C 8-Akkadian III

Heath Dewrell

Unique #: 42385

MW 1:30PM-3:00PM

Advanced studies in Middle Eastern languages. Read Akkadian texts from a variety of genres and time periods, including Assyrian and Babylonian letters and royal inscriptions.

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew IV: Psalms to Nehemiah

Jonathan Kaplan

Unique #: 40985

W 2:00PM-5:00PM

 

MES 386 • Space and Place In Literature
(also listed as C L 382, MEL 381)

Karen Grumberg

Unique #: 40715

M 2:00PM-5:00PM

What does the representation of space and place in literature contribute to our understanding of global social and cultural dynamics since the 19th century? We hear much about the politics of contested space: territory and airspace, cartography and border, nation and colony. We hear less about the experiential dimension of such spaces, and about sites of everyday life: places as ordinary as a house, a street, a garden, a train. Yet such locales underpin the way we experience the world, nurturing or resisting the diversity of the humans who inhabit or pass through them. Thinking about place and space from this perspective invites us to illuminate the human experience for its own sake; it also compels us to acknowledge the way such experience activates political and ideological paradigms. This course will explore the poetics of space as expressed in literature from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. We will examine these fictional texts from an interdisciplinary array of theoretical perspectives on space and place, which consider the meanings of space as a place, as a condition, as a metaphor, and as a practice. All readings will be in English or English translation.

 

RS 387M • Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
(also listed as HIS 397L, MES 381)

Geoffrey Smith

Unique #: 42955

W 5:00PM-8:00PM

Scholars have employed a variety of models to characterize religion in Late Antiquity. Some talk about trajectories or religious currents that move through time, others emphasize regionality or regional dynamics, still others have suggested that we take seriously the role of landscape and trade networks when charting the development of religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. In recent years the model of religious competition has emerged as a dominant paradigm. This course will explore the prospects and limitations of this model by considering the usefulness of the competition model for understanding how Christians interacted with co-religionists as well as their Roman, Egyptian, and Jewish neighbors from the first through fourth ceintures CE. In this course we will read primary sources as well as scholarship on the topic. All primary sources will be read in translation.

 

MEL 383D • Exegetical Seminar: Hebrew Bible

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 41070

TH 2:00PM-5:00PM

This seminar considers the character and function of the pentateuchal texts or legal collections that typically fall into the category of biblical law. It also examines the relationships among the collections and what can be gleaned about them concerning the practice of law in ancient Israel. Current scholarly theories seek to answer a number of questions related to these topics. First, what is the nature of these so-called legal texts? Were they a form of legislation, a scribal restatement of legal customs, a kind of wisdom literature, a collection of moral ideals, or something else entirely? Second, how should we understand the relationship between biblical law and the legal customs and traditions from other parts of the ancient Near East? Third, what can we learn about the rules that governed litigation, personal status, family, inheritance, property rights, contract, and crime, among other topics? Finally, how do these collections relate to their surrounding narrative context, and how should we order them chronologically? These are the main questions that the seminar will seek to address. Readings will come from primary sources mainly in Biblical Hebrew (with a few in Akkadian) and from a wide range of secondary literature. Accommodations can be made for students who do not know Biblical Hebrew and/or Akkadian.

Panel 3. Add body text in this space.

Panel 4. Add body text in this space.

Panel 5. Add body text in this space.

RS 386M Critical Issues in the New Testament

Face-to-face

Tony Keddie

Unique #: 41915

T 2 PM - 5 PM

Critical Problems in the New Testament (RS 386M) is a technical and intensive introduction to the New Testament and the modern field of New Testament Studies designed for graduate students. Its approach will be largely historical-critical, philological, and social historical, though other methods will be incorporated. Each session will revolve around a major debate in the field. Some will be age-old debates that continue to animate the field (e.g., the Synoptic Problem, Pauline pseudepigraphy, and women’s leadership) while others will be more recent areas of inquiry (e.g., nomenclature of Christian, Jew, Judaean, Israelite, Judeo-Christian, Jewish-Christian; Paul, urbanism, and poverty; Paul and Judaism; Paul and Greco-Roman moral philosophy; Revelation and imperial cults) and emergent debates (e.g., limits of “monotheism”; roles of embodied experience). With each debate, we will situate the key issues within the context of ancient Mediterranean religions, emphasizing the integration of the New Testament texts within their ancient social and cultural milieux in the Roman East.   This seminar helps prepare students in any field to take a comprehensive exam in New Testament and gives them a solid foundation for teaching an undergraduate course introducing the New Testament and Christian origins. Working knowledge of ancient Greek (Attic or Koiné) is a requirement, though exceptions may be granted under certain conditions.

 

MEL 380C Akkadian I

Face-to-face

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 39935

MW 1:30 PM - 3 PM

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MES 384 Law and Religion in the Modern Middle East

Face-to-face

Samy Ayoub

Unique #39605

T 2 PM – 5 PM

Law and Religion in the Modern Middle East is a seminar that examines the nature of law before and after secularism. It explores the laws that govern religion and religious expression in Middle Eastern national constitutions, with a special focus on both the free exercise and establishment clause of Islam as the religion of the state. We shall analyze emerging legal understandings of authority and rights and explore the interconnections of “religion” and “law”—as traditions of thought as well as sets of practices, modes of relation as well as constellations of values. In this seminar, we will consider what counts as religion for constitutional and legal purposes. In addition, we also investigate the ways in which modern nation-states secularize religion. Participants will be expected to read academic legal commentary on the formulations of religion in the modern world. The seminar will provide extensive case-law from lower and higher courts. To better situate the classroom discussions, students will read historical, anthropological, and sociological studies on the topics of family law, international religious freedom law, and leading religions’ doctrines and teachings concerning religious freedom.

 

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew: Isaiah-Book of the Twelve

Face-to-face

Heath Dewrell

Unique #: 39845

M 3 PM – 6 PM

Taught in English with readings in Hebrew. Read and analyze the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve in Hebrew.

MEL 383C Current Issues in Hebrew Bible

Face-to-face

Jonathan Kaplan

Unique #: 39850

TH 2 PM - 5 PM

This course will examine the issues that are current in scholarship about Achaemenid Period Yehud (Judah).

Course Objectives

• To learn the major areas of critical scholarly discussion about Achaemenid Period Yehud (Judah).
• To collect bibliography about the critical issues in the study of Achaemenid Period Yehud.
• To evaluate the state of the current scholarly work on Achaemenid Period Yehud.
• To identify new areas for research in this sub-field of scholarship.

 

RS 386M Critical Issues in Judaism in Late Antiquity

Face-to-face

Jonathan Schofer

Unique #: 41845

M 3 PM - 6 PM

This graduate seminar examines the literature and history of Judaism in the time period from the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in 70 C.E. to the early Middle Ages.  A primary focus will be for students to learn the extensive literary sources of classical Rabbinic Judaism, including Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash.  At the same time, study of literature, practices, and groups beyond the canon will include mysticism, synagogue poetry, and beyond.  Topics will include the dynamics of scriptural interpretation (Midrash), gender and sexuality, purity and ethics, worship and mysticism, and law.  We will consider approaches to history and the social context of the extensive body of written sources we have for understanding Judaism in this time.  Assignments will include presentation in class, short written pieces during the semester, and a medium-sized research paper.

 

MEL 380C Akkadian III

Face-to-face

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 39845

M 2 PM - 5 PM

 

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew: Genesis-Deuteronomy

Face-to-face

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 39775

W 2 PM - 5PM

This seminar involves the reading and analysis of Genesis–Deuteronomy in Hebrew. The Masoretic Text as reproduced in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia will serve as the main text. The Septuagint will be consulted on occasion. Much of the course will be devoted to examining the grammar and syntax of the Tiberian Hebrew in the text and attempting to understand any anomalies that are encountered. Students will also practice pointing unpointed texts from the Pentateuch. In addition, the course will consider the matter of source criticism and the state of current scholarship on that topic, as well as certain literary considerations that are important for reading these texts.

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew III

Face-to-face

Na’ama Pat-El

Unique #: 40890

W 2:00-5:00 PM

This course trains students to read and analyze a sizeable amount of textual data from the Hebrew Bible. We will read approximately 30 pages of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia every weak, with the aim that students will recognize what is grammatically unusual in the text. The course covers the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua–Kings) and the Books of Chronicles. In addition to reading Hebrew and working on the questions and issues that arise from working through the texts, we will survey the fundamental principles of the historical grammar of Biblical Hebrew, situate the language in its Northwest-Semitic context, and reconstruct various stages of Hebrew grammar.

LAW 397S • Seminar: Comparative Middle East Law

Face-to-face

Samy Ayoub

Unique #: 29780

Th 2:00-5:00 PM

This seminar explores modern legal structures - legislative and judicial - of the Middle East. It introduces students to the process by which traditional Islamic law was transformed into state law in the 19th and 20th centuries CE, by investigating debates on codification, legal modernity and legal borrowing. With the emergence of the modern nation-states across the Muslim World, many countries accorded constitutional status to Islamic law as “a source” or “the source” of law and some states purport to base their entire systems on particular versions of Islamic law. The formation of the modern legal regimes in the Middle East was a hybrid product of Islamic and western legal traditions, which raises questions about legal authority, legality, and the creation of modern legal and judicial institutions. The course aims to encourage comparative legal analysis to assess generalizations about law typically formulated with respect to Western legal traditions. The course discusses cases and codes from Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The topics covered in this course are constitutional law, judicial review, administrative law, obligations, commercial law, family law, human rights and criminal law.

MEL 380C Akkadian III

Face-to-face

Bruce Wells

Unique #: 40970

M 2:00-5:00 PM

 

MEL 380C Ugaritic

Face-to-face

Heath Dewrell

Unique #: 40965

TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM

Study of the West Semitic languages from the city of Ugarit in what is now Syria, which was spoken from the fourteenth through twelfth century BC. Covers the essentials of grammar needed for reading Ugaritic texts.

RS 383M Crit Issues 2nd Temple Judaism

Face-to-face

Tony Keddie

Unique #: 42940

Th 2:00-5:00 PM

This seminar examines the literature and material culture of Second Temple Judaism (ca. 520 BCE – 70 CE) in dialogue with some of the most recent and cutting-edge scholarship on Jews and Judaism in Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman contexts. In contrast to traditional, mainstream approaches, the seminar encourages students to develop a holistic picture of the diversity of Jewish religious experiences in this period through five critical interventions: first, challenging problematic divisions of literature by canon and corpus (e.g., Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls), genre (e.g., prophecy, apocalypse, wisdom), language (e.g., Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek), and sect (e.g., Pharisees, Essenes, Christ followers); second, integrating the study of literature with documentary texts, inscriptions, and other material culture, and thus sources representing non-elites with those representing elites as well as ideas with practices; third, carefully contextualizing each text and artifact in relation to proximate non-Jewish literature and material culture; fourth, recognizing interactions between the Jerusalem Temple and diaspora Jewish communities without conceptualizing diaspora Judaism as subsidiary or deviant; and fifth, complicating unilateral models of cultural change and imperialism (e.g., Hellenization, Romanization), particularly as they pertain to religion and ethnicity.

Students will be responsible for four presentations on primary sources (one on each of four source types: literature, documentary papyri/ostraca, inscriptions, and other archaeological sources). Final grades will be based on these reports, regular participation, and an original research paper. 

FR 391K Im/possible Narratives: Remembering, Witnessing, and Imagining WWII and the Holocaust
Face-to-face 
Hervé Picherit
Unique #: 36405
Th 2:00-5:00 PM

In his essay “History Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma,” Eric Santner denounces what he calls “narrative fetishism” as the “construction and deployment of a narrative consciously or unconsciously designed to expunge the traces of the trauma or loss that called that narrative into being in the first place.”  The telling of war and genocide often happens at the expense of what is told.  After all, what narrative conventions can appropriately render the trials and traumas the Second World War, and the Holocaust in particular?  This dilemma is met with the devastating urgency of recording, preserving, and understanding accurately these selfsame events.  It is in light of this implacable tension that the texts, films, and other cultural artifacts of this course pose the questions:  How does one go about telling the untellable?  How can narrative constitute a traumatic past as the object of explanation and understanding?

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew III 
Face-to-face 
Heath Dewrell
Unique #: 40800 
W 2:00-5:00 PM

Read and analyze the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve in Hebrew.

MEL 380C Akkadian II
Face-to-face 
Heath Dewrell
Unique #: 40890
TTh 12:30-2:00 PM

MEL 381 Space and Place in Literature
Face-to-face 
Karen Grumberg
Unique #: 40895
M 2:00-5:00 PM

What does the representation of space and place in literature contribute to our understanding of global social and cultural dynamics since the 19th century? We hear much about the politics of contested space: territory and airspace, cartography and border, nation and colony. We hear less about the experiential dimension of such spaces, and about sites of everyday life: places as ordinary as a house, a street, a garden, a train. Yet such locales underpin the way we experience the world, nurturing or resisting the diversity of the humans who inhabit or pass through them. Thinking about place and space from this perspective invites us to illuminate the human experience for its own sake; it also compels us to acknowledge the way such experience activates political and ideological paradigms. This course will explore the poetics of social and experiential space as expressed in literature from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. We will examine these fictional texts from an interdisciplinary array of theoretical perspectives on space and place, which consider the meanings of space as a place, as a condition, as a metaphor, and as a practice. All readings will be in English or English translation.

MEL 383D Exegetical Seminar in the Hebrew Bible
Face-to-face 
Bruce Wells
Unique #: 40900
Th 2:00-5:00 PM

MEL 384 Law and Religion in the Modern Middle East
Face-to-face 
Samy Ayoub
Unique #: 40555
Th 2:00-5:00 PM

Law and Religion in the Modern Middle East is a seminar that examines the laws that govern religion and religious expression in Middle Eastern national constitutions, with a special focus on both the free exercise and establishment clause of Islam as the religion of the state. We shall analyze emerging legal understandings of authority and rights, and explore the interconnections of “religion” and “law”—as traditions of thought as well as sets of practices, modes of relation as well as constellations of values. In this seminar, we will consider what counts as religion for constitutional and legal purposes. Participants will be expected to read academic legal commentary on the formulations of religion in the modern Middle East. The seminar will provide extensive case-law from lower and higher courts addressing issues that affect Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other faith communities. To better situate the classroom discussions, students will read historical, anthropological, and sociological studies on the topics of family law, international religious freedom law, and leading religions’ doctrines and teachings concerning religious freedom.

RS 383C Textual Criticism/Manuscript Studies
Face-to-face 
Geoffrey Smith
Unique #: 42855
W 2:00-5:00 PM

This course will introduce students to the study of ancient Greek papyri. While we will spend some time reading sub-literary and documentary texts, the primary focus of the course will be Greek literary papyri. Students will learn the basic elements of creating a critical edition, such as palaeography, dating, identification of relevant scribal features, collation, and textual criticism, so that by the end of the course they will be able to publish editions of known and unknown Greek literary texts. Students will also become familiar with the history and practice of the discipline of New Testament textual criticism, major witnesses to the text of the New Testament, and some of the most important manuscript discoveries of the 20th century.

RS 386M Religion and Economics in the Ancient Mediterranean
Face-to-face 
Tony Keddie
Unique #: 42865
Th 2:00-5:00 PM

What language should we use to describe gods owning land and enslaved persons, receiving gifts, and lending money? How about when labor guilds depend on divine oracles or when temple functionaries engage in sex labor? Or when authors speak of sin as debt, salvation as slavery, and cosmology as “economy” (oikonomia)? Should we use the theoretical lexicons associated with the modern fields of “religion,” “economics,” both, or neither? Influential studies of ancient Mediterranean societies have described both religion and economy as “embedded,” meaning that these domains were inseparable from other social and political fields in antiquity unlike, allegedly, in modern capitalist societies. But only in recent years have scholars in different areas of ancient Mediterranean studies begun to recognize the degree to which the challenges of theorizing religion overlap with those of theorizing economy precisely because of the ancient intersections of those practices we typically identify with these domains. Participants in this seminar will critically examine wide-ranging primary sources (literature, inscriptions, papyri, and material culture) to determine the prospects and limitations of current models from varied methodological traditions for their own research—among others, Marxist “sacred economy,” Bourdieusian “spiritual economy,” post-structuralist “divine currency,” neo-materialist “theo-economics,” neo-institutionalist “divine institutions,” and social-anthropological “gift exchange.” The seminar will encompass diverse religious traditions from the Iron Age through Late Antiquity, though special attention will be given to Jewish and Christian sources from the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

JS 383 Early Jewish and Christian Literature II 
Face-to-face
Instructor TBD
Unique #: 39646
TH 2:00-5:00 PM
UTC 1.142

PA 388K or 325K Civil Society Activities Israel/Palestine
Face-to-face OR Web-based
David Eaton
Unique#: 60850 or 60624
T 6:00-9:00 PM
Location TBD

MEL 380C Syriac
Face-to-face
Na’ama Pat-El
Unique#: 41230
M 2:00-5:00 PM
CAL 422

MEL 380C Akkadian I
Face-to-face
Bruce Wells
Unique#: 41225
MW 11:30AM-1:00PM
CAL 422

HEB 380C Bible in Hebrew IV
Face-to-face
Jonathan Kaplan
Unique#: 41135
T 2:00-5:00 PM
PAR 10

HEB 381H Intensive Graduate Language Instruction
Face-to-face
Esther Raizen
Unique#: 41140
MWF 9:00-10:00 AM MEZ 1.122
TTH 9:30-11:00 AM MEZ 2.118

HEB 381 H Intensive Graduate Language Instruction
Face-to-face
Anat Maimon
Unique#: 41145
MWF 2:00-3:00 PM / TTH 2:00-3:30 PM
CAL 422

HIS 383 Conflict and Coexistence in Eastern Europe
Face-to-face
Mary Neuburger
Unique#: 39348
T 2:00-5:00 PM
BUR 231