What is the relationship between culture and ethics in conflict zones? Can culture serve as an agent of conflict resolution and social change, or does it deepen political divisions? How does art represent extreme violence? How do power and cultural interact? This course explores such questions through the lens of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We'll see how the conflict permeates everyday life, and how Palestinian and Israeli artists, writers and filmmakers respond. Course material includes film, fiction, memoir, visual art, music, TV satire, interactive websites, and cookbooks, all in English translation; course features guest speakers.

Jews have often been thought of as a 'nation without art' who disparaged the visual and discouraged artistic creation. But the reality is very different: Judaism has a rich tradition of artistic production as well as a long history of reflection on the role of images in religious life. This course explores the nature and function of visual expression in ancient Judaism, with a particular focus on Jewish art from Late Antiquity. In addition to considering these materials in their own immediate contexts, we also use them to assess how Jews viewed and engaged with the wider visual culture of the ancient Mediterranean world.

This course examines the fascinating and tragic history of the encounter and conflict between Jews and Arabs in and around Palestine/Israel beginning in the late 19th century. We will try to understand the evolution of the conflict from the distinct perspectives of the different parties engaged in it, aiming to comprehend their motivations and the obstacles that have stood in the way of a peaceful resolution. The course is structured around questions, inviting students to partake in the challenging task of exploring one of the world's most complex, ever-developing and enduring political conflicts.

The Cairo Geniza is a cache of texts from an Egyptian synagogue including letters, lists and legal deeds from before 1500, when most Jews lived in the Islamic world. These are some of the best-documented people in pre-modern history and among the most mobile, crossing the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to trade, study, apprentice and marry. Data science, neural network-based handwritten text recognition and other computational methods are now helping make sense of the texts on a large scale. Students will contribute to an evolving state of knowledge and gain an insider's view of what we can and can't know in premodern history.

Are the Jews a separate nation? Should they have their own country? Where should it be located? This course investigates why Jews and non-Jews alike began asking these questions in the late eighteenth century and explores the varieties of answers they offered. The course's focus is on those who insisted that the Jews were a nation that required a state in the Jews' historic homeland. We will try to understand why these people - known collectively as Zionists - came to these conclusions, and why many others disagreed. The final part of the course will address debates within the State of Israel about what it means to be a "Jewish state."

This course introduces the Hebrew Bible (Christian "Old Testament"), a complex anthology written by many people over nearly a thousand years. In this class, we will ask questions about the Hebrew Bible's historical context and ancient meaning, as well as its literary profile and early reception. Who wrote the Bible? When and how was it written? What sources did its authors draw on to write these stories? And to what circumstances were they responding? Students will develop the skills to critically analyze written sources, and to understand, contextualize, and critique the assumptions inherent in modern treatments of the Bible.

In this course we will learn about the diverse world of ancient Jews and discover not one, but many ancient "Judaisms." The course will cover a broad timespan, from the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple under Persian rule in the sixth century BCE, to the compilation of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds sometime in the fifth and sixth centuries CE. This eventful millennium witnessed imperial conquests, revolts, and much inner-Jewish strife. We will examine literary and material sources, produced by Jews in Egypt, Palestine, and Babylonia, including stories, philosophical writings, amulets, and burial inscriptions.