History 620-401 Fall 2004



Jewish Studies 450

Research Seminar in Jewish Studies

Topic for Spring 2012: Researching Modern Jewish History

INSTRUCTORS: Joshua Shanes and/or Adam Mendelsohn

Course Description:

This course introduces students to the historiography and key scholarly debates in modern Jewish history. The course covers Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and America, focusing on the pivotal social, cultural and intellectual developments of Jewish modernity. Classic works in the field as well as current scholarship will be emphasized.

Course Requirements:

Students are expected to prepare thoroughly for each class session and to be able to evaluate and discuss all the readings. Class participation is an essential requirement of the seminar. Each week, two students will act as discussion leaders and will circulate discussion questions via email two days in advance of class. At the conclusion of the seminar, students will be required to write a 20 page research essay on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor(s).

The goals of this seminar format are many:

• to encourage active presentation

• to develop a common language and set of problems by the beginning of class each week so that class time is spent exploring the week's issues in depth;

• to make writing an essential part of intellectual dialogue and to develop skills in summarizing books and arguments;

• to create an atmosphere of collegial participation and cooperation as the foundation of intellectual inquiry and exchange. How well we meet these goals depends on the seminar members, individually and collectively.

Grading

Written work (both the essay and the questions and responses required for weekly discussion) will constitute fifty percent of the final grade, with classroom discussion comprising the other fifty percent.

Readings

The following books are available for purchase at the College Bookstore except where noted. In addition, all books are on reserve at the circulation desk of Addlestone Library.

- Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (2004)

- Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (2004)

- Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (1995) [out of print; used copies available at ]

- Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism & the Russian Jews, 1862-1917 (1981)

- Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (2001)

- Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women (1995)

- Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991) [used copies available at ]

- Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1989)

* Other readings will appear on WebCT.

Week 1: Historiography and Historians

Michael A. Meyer. "The Emergence of Modern Jewish Historiography," in idem, Judaism within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion,(2001) pp. 44-63

Jonathan Frankel, “Assimilation and the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Towards a New Historiography?” in idem and Steven Zipperstein, eds., Assimilation and Community in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1992), pp. 1-37

Derek Penslar, “Innovation and Revisionism in Israeli Historiography,” History and Memory 7/1 (1995): 125-46

Week 2: The Problem of the Modern (I): Origins

Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (2004), pages TBA

Michael Meyer, “Where Does the Modern Period of Jewish History Begin?” in idem, Judaism Within Modernity: Essays on Jewish History and Religion (2001), pp. 21-31

Week 3: Enlightenment

Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (2004), pages TBA

Week 4: Emancipation

Salo Baron, “Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation,” Diogenes 29 (Spring 1960): 56-81

Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (1995), Introduction and chapters 6, 8, 9/pp. 3-36, 157-205, 238-83

Week 5: Social Change, Integration

Readings TBA

Week 6: Jewish Politics

Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism & the Russian Jews,

1862-1917 (1981), pp. 49-257, 453-547

Paula Hyman, “Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest: The Kosher Meat Boycott of

1902,” American Jewish History 70 (Sept. 1980): 91-105

Week 7: Zionism

David Vital, The Future of the Jews (1990) pp. 1-28

Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (2001)

Arthur A. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (1999), pp. 145-84

Week 8: Gender and Jewish History

Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women (1995)

Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), pp. 3-134

Week 9: Community and Mobility in America

Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (1981), pp. 1-17, 232-41

Eli Lederhendler, New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 1950-1970 (2001), pp. 1-35

Week 10: Holocaust

Saul Friedländer, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (1993),

pp. vii-xiv, 42-63, 102-137

Raul Hilberg, “The Destruction of the European Jews: Precedents,” in Omer Bartov, ed., The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath (2000), pp. 21-42

David Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, pp. 196-257

David Engel, “On Studying Jewish History in Light of the Holocaust,” pp. 1-20

Week 11: Jewish Memory

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (1989)

Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History, (1993) pp. 1-49

David Myers, “Remembering Zakhor: A Super-Commentary,” History and Memory 4 (Fall/Winter 1992), 129-46

Beth S. Wenger, "Memory As Identity: The Invention of the Lower East Side," American Jewish History, 85:1 (March 1997): 3-27

Weeks 12-13: Student Research Presentations

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