Current Course Offerings

Fulfills one course toward the Language Requirement of the certificate, but not the major
Cross-listed with GNS 106
Instructor: Matthew Johnson
MTWR 8:50-9:40am
Credits: 4
Level: Elementary
Counts as LAS credit (L&S)

Cross-listed with History 213
Fulfills one “History/Social Sciences” requirement for the major/certificate; for the major, fulfills the “America” subcategory
Instructor: Tony Michels
TR 11-12:15 p.m. +discussion sections
Credits: 4
Gen Ed: Ethnic Studies
Breadth: Humanities
Level: Elementary
Description: Explores the interplay between Jews and U. S. popular culture, covering such subjects as early 20th century vaudeville, the “golden age” of Hollywood, rhythm and blues music, television, and stand-up comedy.

Fulfills one “History/Social Sciences” requirement for the major/certificate
Instructor: Ofer Ashkenazi
MW 2:30-3:45 pm
Level: Elementary
Breadth: Humanities
Description: Examines the lives of Jews in Germany from the National Socialist rise to power in 1933 to the regime’s collapse in 1945. Through primary sources—including photographs, films, and popular songs, as well as diaries, letters, newspaper articles, and official documents—students explore how Jews experienced and interpreted daily life under Nazism: their encounters with non-Jewish Germans, the ways gender, age, and class shaped their experiences, and how communities adapted, fractured, or disappeared. 

Fulfills one “Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts” requirement for the major/certificate
Cross-listed with German and GNS+
Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff
MWF 12:05 – 12:55
Credits: 3
Breadth: Literature
Level: Elementary
Description: Introduces students to the space of the hotel as a site of cross-cultural exchange and medical recuperation. The literature and films under examination focus on Central European sites of rest and healing between the World Wars. Driving the syllabus are the hotels, health resorts, and sanatoria that came to serve as sights in which Jewish identity was negotiated against a complex backdrop of increasing integration and exclusion. We will survey material originally produced in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Polish, French, and English, including work by: Sholem Aleichem, David Vogel, Vicki Baum, Arthur Schnitzler, Zofia Nałkowska, Siegfried Kracauer, Wes Anderson, and Thomas Mann.

Fulfills one “Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts” requirement for the major/certificate; for the major, fulfills the “America” sub-requirement
Cross-listed with German 279 and Littrans 279
Instructor: Sunny Yudkoff
MWF 1:20-2:10 p.m.
Credits: 3
Gen Ed: Ethnic Studies
Breadth: Literature
Level: Elementary
Description: Focuses on the Jewish immigrant experience in Yiddish, a fusion language that brings together German, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Latin, Aramaic, and more. In addition to identifying and analyzing points of Jewish-Christian difference, students will explore how Jews writing in Yiddish navigated America as members of a religious minority and how they narrated the experiences of other minoritized groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans.

Cross listed as: Jewish Studies 105 or GNS 105; cross-listed with graduate-level 405
Prof. Matthew Johnson
MTWR: 8:50-9:40
Credits: 4
Course Level: Elementary
L&S Credit Type: Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S
Description: Learn Yiddish, the language of east European Jewry and its diaspora. A language of politics, theater, and folklore. A language of the classroom and the bakery, the factory and the field, the synagogue and the street, from Warsaw to Stockholm, Berlin to Buenos Aires, New York to Madison, WI. Yiddish offers a gateway to explore the history of Jewish culture. No prerequisites required. All are welcome.

Cross listed as: Jewish Studies 269, German 269 or LitTrans 269
Prof. Sunny Yudkoff
TR 11:00am – 12:15pm
Credits: 3
Level: Elementary
Breadth: Literature
L&S Credit Type: Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S
Description: Exploration of European Yiddish fiction, poetry, folklore, and cinema, with a focus on works of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Cross listed as: Jewish Studies 269, German 269 or LitTrans 269
Prof. Sunny Yudkoff
MW 4:00 – 5:15pm
Credits: 3
Level: Intermediate
Breadth: Literature
L&S Credit Type: Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S
Description:The image and representation of the “Jew” and Jews in the literatures and cultures of the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe, including Russia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. Both pre- and post-Holocaust texts will be read and critically examined.

Cross listed as: Jewish Studies 318 or LitTrans 318
Prof. Sunny Yudkoff
TR 9:30-10:45
Credits: 3
Level: Intermediate
Breadth: Literature
L&S Credit Type: Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S
Description: Pre-modern Jewish society’s breakdown, immigration, the challenges of integration and exclusion, and the establishment of new communities will serve as a backdrop for the analysis and comparison of Jewish literary texts written in Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian, and English.

Cross listed as Jewish Studies 219 or History 219
Prof. Tony Michels
Lecture: MWF 1:20pm – 2:10PM
+ 4 discussion sections
Credits: 4
Level: Intermediate
Gen Ed: Ethnic Studies
Breadth: Humanities
L&S Credit Type: Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S
Description: By the 1950s, the United States became home to the largest Jewish community at that time.  Why did millions of Jews come to the United States?  How has life in a liberal political and capitalist economic order shaped the Jewish experience in the United States?  In turn, how have Jews influenced American culture, politics, and society?  This course surveys the history of American Jews from the 17th century to the 21st century.  Using Jews as the primary, though not only, case, the course examines themes in the history of immigration, ethnicity, and religion.  Topics include patterns of political activity, social mobility, processes of integration and exclusion, Jewish culture, religion, and problems in community-building.

Cross-listed as Jewish Studies 310 or History 310
Instructor: Ofer Ashkenazi
MW 2:30- 3:45
+ 4 discussion sections
Credits: 4
Breadth: Humanities
Level: Intermediate
Description: References to the Holocaust abound in contemporary political debates and in our popular culture. But most people know very little about the history of the Holocaust, despite the mountains of superb historical scholarship that experts in the field have produced over decades of dedicated research. Utilize correspondence, diaries, or other firsthand accounts of Holocaust victims, together with study of the larger events around them, to reconstruct the experiences of ordinary families swept up in the Nazi genocide.