Spring 2020

Jewish History in the Modern Age

Listed in: History, as HIST-204

Faculty

Adi Gordon (Section 01)

Description

[EUC] This course introduces students to the history of the Jews from the 16th century to the present. Jews—a small group, lacking a stable geographical or political center for most of modern history—have played a remarkably central role in world events. Jewish history exemplifies questions of tolerance, intolerance, and diversity in the Modern Age. From Europe to the Americas to the Middle East, Jewish history has witnessed constant interchange between the non-Jewish world and its Jewish subcultures. This course investigates Jewish history’s multiple dimensions: developments in Jews’ political status and economic opportunity; dramatic demographic shifts and global migrations; transformations in Jewish cultures, ideologies and identities; and religious adjustments to modernity. We examine a variety of Jewish encounters with the modern world: integration, acculturation, assimilation, anti-Semitism, Jewish dissimilation and nationalism. Finally, the course will use this broad historical lens to explore and contextualize the double watershed of the 1940s—the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel—as well as contemporary Jewish life. Two class meetings per week.

Spring semester. Professor A. Gordon.

HIST 204 - L/D

Section 01
Tu 11:30 AM - 12:50 PM BARR 102
Th 11:30 AM - 12:50 PM BARR 102

This is preliminary information about books for this course. Please contact your instructor or the Academic Coordinator for the department, before attempting to purchase these books.

ISBN Title Publisher Author(s) Comment Book Store Price
The Jews: A History Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009 John M. Efron Amherst Books TBD
Survival in Auschwitz Collier, 1993 Primo Levi Amherst Books TBD

These books are available locally at Amherst Books.

Offerings

2024-25: Not offered
Other years: Offered in Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Spring 2019, Spring 2020