NES 2569 - [History and Jewish Diaspora]

(crosslisted) ANTHR 2669, JWST 2569
(CU-ITL)

Fall. Not offered 2017-2018. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

J. Boyarin.

Jewish communities have been established, flourished and often struggled for millenia, throughout much of the world, and in vital contact with a vast range of other peoples and cultures. This course approaches Jewish cultural history as the study of the constant and dynamic tension between that which unites Jews in all these different times and places, and that which makes every Jew a person of his or her own time and place. Our whirlwind tour will take us from ancient Israel, through Babylonia and the world of early Islam, into the medieval origins of Ashkenazi Jewry, down to Ottoman North Africa, and all the way across the Indian Ocean. We will learn how Jewish and other diaspora communities overcome challenges to maintain their distinctive identities.