Jewish Studies

JWST 130 - ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA

Short Title: ANTI-SEMITISM AND ISLAMOPHOBIA

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Distribution Group: Distribution Group I

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: What do anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have in common? Are they two different modes of oppression and discrimination, or are they part of a similar phenomenon? Moreover, are they religious, racial, or ethnic forms of discrimination? Throughout this course, we will complicate the narrative that sees Jews and Arabs as perpetual enemies through a historical and philosophical exploration into the development of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Students will think historically about the construction of race, ethnicity, and religion and the various modes by which these are employed, and they will use that knowledge to think critically about current depictions of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence. In the first part of the course, we will consider some of the historical and conceptual underpinnings of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We will begin in medieval Spain and then track their development through modernity, paying close attention to how these discourses changed and evolved over time; in the second part, we will look at the impact of the Holocaust and the rise of the State of Israel and consider current iterations of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe and America today. Cross-list: RELI 130.

JWST 201 - GREAT BOOKS OF JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE

Short Title: GREAT BOOKS OF JEWISH CULTURE

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Distribution Group: Distribution Group I

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: The Jewish people have often understood themselves as the “people of the book,” because of the Jewish tradition’s reliance on texts and textual study as a central component of religious culture and practice. This course will take the idea of the book as a starting point for a survey of Jewish history and culture. Spanning the biblical period to the present, we will read primary texts important to Jewish life and culture as well as scholarship from disciplines as varied as religion, history, anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, philosophy, and gender and sexuality studies. In doing so, we will learn about the varied communities that produced these texts; the languages they spoke and read; their particular religious and cultural practices; and how they have understood themselves in the context of other social and political communities over time, including in the ancient, medieval, and modern eras.

JWST 218 - RADICAL JEWISH CULTURES

Short Title: RADICAL JEWISH CULTURES

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: In 1990s New York City, a group of musician-improvisers began to describe their artistic practice under the title of “Radical Jewish Culture.” The term raised a slew of interrelated questions: What makes culture Jewish? What makes Jewish culture radical? What are some of the aesthetic characteristics of alternative Jewish artistic practices? What social questions related to Jewish life are entangled within these practices? In what ways does alternative Jewish art expand the conversation on relevant social questions and vice versa? This course explores this core set of questions among a range of Radical Jewish Cultures across media and around the world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Moving through Europe, the U.S., Latin America, North Africa, and Israel/Palestine, we will read, listen to, and view Jewish literature, music, theatre, dance, and film that sit outside the mainstream.

JWST 238 - SPECIAL TOPICS

Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Lecture/Laboratory, Seminar, Independent Study

Credit Hours: 1-4

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Lower-Level

Description: Topics and credit hours vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.

JWST 317 - JEWISH GRAPHIC NOVEL

Short Title: JEWISH GRAPHIC NOVEL

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Distribution Group: Distribution Group I

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: This course will examine contemporary works that combine image and text to depict Jewish history, culture, community, and identity in the form of the graphic novel.

JWST 318 - ISRAELI WOMEN WRITERS

Short Title: ISRAELI WOMEN WRITERS

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: In the last 25 years there has been an explosion of women's poetry and fiction in Israel. In this course we will explore Israeli women's writing since the inception of the state of Israel and examine what the work of contemporary women writers means for Israeli culture, society, and politics. Cross-list: SWGS 318.

JWST 325 - ARCHIVAL RESEARCH AND HISTORICAL METHODS: JEWISH HOUSTON

Short Title: JEWISH HOUSTON

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture/Laboratory

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: Working with rare documents and materials in the Woodson Research Center, students will learn how to process archival collections, write finding aids, and conduct oral history interviews. By semester’s end, each student will produce a major work of original research on a topic of interest in Houston/South Texas Jewish history.

JWST 348 - SEX AND GENDER IN MODERN JEWISH CULTURE

Short Title: SEX & GENDER IN JEWISH CULTURE

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Lecture

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: How has Jewish identity historically been constructed as gendered, and how has that affected Jewish self-perception and -representation as well as the representations of others? This course explores the intersection between gender and Jewishness from several different historical and cultural perspectives, using literature, film, and philosophy. Cross-list: SWGS 348. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for JWST 348 if student has credit for RELI 347/SWGS 347.

JWST 351 - HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION IN LITERATURE, ART, AND FILM

Short Title: HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: This course will address the representation of the Holocaust in literature, art, and film. Is the Holocaust representable? What literary and artistic techniques and devices have been employed to represent the unrepresentable? Through Holocaust narrative, poetry, fiction, art, memorials, documentary and narrative film, we will explore these questions. Cross-list: FILM 351. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for JWST 351 if student has credit for FILM 349/RELI 349.

JWST 401 - WHY THE JEWS? THEORIES OF ANTISEMITISM

Short Title: THEORIES OF ANTISEMITISM

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: This class explores some of the major theoretical statements on antisemitism produced
in the modern period. Beginning with a brief look at the history of Jewish emancipation
and the ensuing debates about the “Jewish Question,” the course will consider the ways that antisemitism has been understood from the perspectives of history, theology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, critical theory, postcolonial thought, and more. The class will conclude with a consideration of the fraught contemporary arguments about the relationship between antisemitism and Zionism.

JWST 418 - MUSIC AND DIASPORA

Short Title: MUSIC AND DIASPORA

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Seminar

Credit Hours: 3

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: Though it is common for musical genres to be affiliated with nation-states, border-crossing diasporic music is in fact booming all around us. Bhangra, rai, jazz, klezmer, and many more point to longer histories and larger systems of transnational movement and social consciousness. In this course, we follow the music to explore the central place of diaspora in our world as well as the social critiques it offers. We ask two simultaneous questions: How does diaspora shape music? And what can music teach us about diaspora? Throughout the semester, we will listen to and read about Afro-diasporic music, music from the Jewish diaspora, the South Asian diaspora, “queer diaspora,” and beyond. Threaded together with broader materials from ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural studies, and more, we explore key histories of border crossing that lead to modern diasporic formations, including the transatlantic African slave trade and colonialism. Critically analyzing musical questions such as tradition and hybridity leads us to examine diasporic approaches to themes of movement, borders, home, and identity, that challenge social systems of power. This course is designed to benefit and interest students from a wide range of disciplines and interests in the subject matter. Please feel free to reach out directly to instructor with any questions you may have about the course’s fit.

JWST 477 - SPECIAL TOPICS

Short Title: SPECIAL TOPICS

Department: Jewish Studies

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

Course Type: Internship/Practicum, Laboratory, Lecture, Seminar, Lecture/Laboratory, Independent Study

Credit Hours: 1-4

Restrictions: Enrollment is limited to Undergraduate, Undergraduate Professional or Visiting Undergraduate level students.

Course Level: Undergraduate Upper-Level

Description: Topics and credit hours may vary each semester. Contact department for current semester's topic(s). Repeatable for Credit.