Courses for Spring 2025
| Title | Instructors | Location | Time | Description | Cross listings | Fulfills | Registration notes | Syllabus | Syllabus URL | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JWST 0130-680 | Studies in Ladino | Daisy Braverman | T 1:45 PM-4:44 PM | The course will begin with and historical introduction to Sephardic Jewry. It will discuss the history and language of the Jews in Spain prior to their expulsion in 1492 and follow up with their history in the Ottoman Empire. It will then introduce the students to the phonology of the language both in a descriptive and historical perspective. There will also be discussion of the contrast with Castillian Spanish. After a discussion of the grammar, there will be lessons designed to teach the students conversational Judeo-Spanish, using dialogs, pictures, videos, music, visits with native speakers and other interactive methods. | |||||||
| JWST 0200-401 | Elementary Modern Hebrew II | Ibrahim Miari | MTWR 12:00 PM-12:59 PM | A continuation of first semester Elementary Modern Hebrew, which assumes basic skills of reading and speaking and the use of the present tense. Open to all students who have completed one semester of Hebrew at Penn with a grade of B- or above and new students with equivalent competency. | HEBR0200401, HEBR5200401 | ||||||
| JWST 0200-402 | Elementary Modern Hebrew II | Ibrahim Miari | MTWR 3:30 PM-4:29 PM | A continuation of first semester Elementary Modern Hebrew, which assumes basic skills of reading and speaking and the use of the present tense. Open to all students who have completed one semester of Hebrew at Penn with a grade of B- or above and new students with equivalent competency. | HEBR0200402, HEBR5200402 | ||||||
| JWST 0260-401 | Beginning Yiddish II | Alexander Botwinik | TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | In this course, you can continue to develop basic reading, writing and speaking skills. Discover treasures of Yiddish culture: songs, literature, folklore, and films. | YDSH0200401 | ||||||
| JWST 0300-401 | Intermediate Modern Hebrew III | Ibrahim Miari | MTWR 1:45 PM-2:44 PM | Development of the skills of reading, writing, and conversing in modern Hebrew on an intermediate level. Open to all students who have completed two semesters of Hebrew at Penn with a grade of B- or above and new students with equivalent competency. | HEBR0300401, HEBR5300401 | ||||||
| JWST 0303-401 | Introduction to the Bible | Timothy Hogue | TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | An introduction to the major themes and ideas of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament), with attention to the contributions of archaeology and modern Biblical scholarship, including Biblical criticism and the response to it in Judaism and Christianity. All readings are in English. | MELC0300401, RELS0301401 | Humanties & Social Science Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=JWST0303401 | ||||
| JWST 0320-401 | Modern Hebrew Lit. & Film in Translation: The Image of the City | Nili R Gold | T 12:00 PM-2:59 PM | This course is designed to introduce students to the rich art of Modern Hebrew and Israeli literature and film. Poetry, short stories, and novel excerpts are taught in translation. The course studies Israeli cinema alongside literature, examining the various facets of this culture that is made of national aspirations and individual passions. The class is meant for all: no previous knowledge of history or the language is required. The topic changes each time the course is offered. Topics include: giants of Israeli literature; the image of the city; childhood; the marginalized voices of Israel; the Holocaust from an Israeli perspective; and fantasy, dreams & madness. | CIMS0320401, COML0320401, MELC0320401 | Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis |
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| JWST 0400-401 | Intermediate Modern Hebrew IV | Joseph L Benatov | W 12:00 PM-12:59 PM TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM |
This course constitutes the final semester of Intermediate Modern Hebrew. Hence, one of the main goals of the course is to prepare the students for the proficiency exam in Hebrew. Emphasis will be placed on grammar skills and ability to read literary texts. Open to all students who have completed three semesters of Hebrew at Penn with a grade of B- or above and new students with equivalent competency. | HEBR0400401, HEBR5400401 | ||||||
| JWST 0400-402 | Intermediate Modern Hebrew IV | Joseph L Benatov | TR 1:45 PM-3:14 PM W 1:45 PM-2:44 PM |
This course constitutes the final semester of Intermediate Modern Hebrew. Hence, one of the main goals of the course is to prepare the students for the proficiency exam in Hebrew. Emphasis will be placed on grammar skills and ability to read literary texts. Open to all students who have completed three semesters of Hebrew at Penn with a grade of B- or above and new students with equivalent competency. | HEBR0400402, HEBR5400402 | ||||||
| JWST 0460-401 | Intermediate Yiddish II | Alexander Botwinik | TR 8:30 AM-9:59 AM | Continuation of YDSH 0300. Emphasis on reading texts and conversation. | YDSH0400401 | ||||||
| JWST 0470-401 | Intermediate Biblical Hebrew II | Joshua A. Jeffers | MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM | This course is a continuation of the fall semester's Intermediate Biblical Hebrew I. No one will be admitted into the course who has not taken the fall semester. It will continue to focus on using the grammar and vocabulary learned at the introductory level to enable students to read biblical texts independently and take advanced Bible exegesis courses. We will concentrate this semester on various selections of Biblical poetry, including Exodus 15 and Job 28. We will also continue to translate English prose into Biblical Hebrew. | MELC0304401, MELC5214401 | ||||||
| JWST 1000-401 | Advanced Modern Hebrew | Joseph L Benatov | TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM | In this course students are introduced to the vibrant world of contemporary Israeli culture by reading some of the best plays, poems, short stories and journalism published in Israel today. They also watch and analyze some of Israel's most popular films, TV programs, and videos. Themes include Jewish-Arab relations, the founding of the State, family ties and intergenerational conflict, war and society, and the recent dynamic changes in Israel society. Students must have taken four semesters of Hebrew at Penn or permission of instructor. Since the content of this course may change from year to year, students may take it more than once (but only once for credit). | HEBR1000401, HEBR6000401 | Cross Cultural Analysis | |||||
| JWST 1110-401 | Jewish American Literature | Kathryn Hellerstein Chaya Sara Oppenheim |
TR 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | What makes Jewish American literature Jewish? What makes it American? This course will address these questions about ethnic literature through fiction, poetry, drama, and other writings by Jews in America, from their arrival in 1654 to the present. We will discuss how Jewish identity and ethnicity shape literature and will consider how form and language develop as Jewish writers "immigrate" from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Our readings, from Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, will include a variety of stellar authors, both famous and less-known, including Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Allegra Goodman. Students will come away from this course having explored the ways that Jewish culture intertwines with American culture in literature. | COML1110401, GRMN1110401 | Cultural Diviserity in the U.S. Arts & Letters Sector |
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| JWST 1210-401 | Witnessing, Remembering, and Writing the Holocaust | Liliane Weissberg | MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM | Witnessing, Remembering, and Writing the Holocaust What is a witness? What do the witnesses of the Shoah see, hear, experience? And how will they remember things, whether they are victims, perpetrators or bystanders? How are their memories translated into survivors' accounts: reports, fiction, art, and even music or architecture? And what does this teach us about human survival, and about the transmission of experiences to the next generation? The course will ask these questions by studying literature on memory and trauma, as well as novels, poetry, and non-fiction accounts of the Holocaust. We will also look at art work created by survivors or their children, and listen to video testimonies. Among the authors and artists discussed will be work by Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Jean Amery, Christian Boltanski, Daniel Libeskind. The course is supported by the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archives. | ARTH2871401, COML1210401, GRMN1210401 | https://coursesintouch.apps.upenn.edu/cpr/jsp/fast.do?webService=syll&t=202510&c=JWST1210401 | |||||
| JWST 1340-401 | In Babel: Translation and Narration in the Jewish World | Marina Mayorski | MW 10:15 AM-11:44 AM | “Modern Jewish culture speaks with many voices,” wrote the poet, translator, and scholar Benjamin Harshav. In this course, we will echo these voices by exploring how Jewish life was shaped by cross-cultural contact and exchange with non-Jews and other Jewish communities, by studying literary manifestations of multilingualism, translation, adaptation, and circulation of texts and ideas. With a wide variety of texts - fiction, poetry, historiography, and literary criticism - from different languages and cultural contexts, this course will address several fundamental questions about, on the one hand, the ways Jews translated texts for Jewish readers, and, on the other, how Jewish experiences and traditions were translated for broader audiences. In a broader sense, we will consider what is at stake in translating Jewishness and how cultural and linguistic borders are crossed and discussed in different historical contexts. Course assessment is comprised of two short response papers to key concepts and a literary text (with the option for a creative format), and a final paper that can be either research-based or a translation and a translator’s introduction. All materials will be available in English but students are encouraged to read materials in their original languages if they are fluent. |
COML1340401, GRMN1340401, YDSH1340401 | ||||||
| JWST 4300-401 | Giants of Hebrew Literature, Pre-1948 | Nili R Gold | T 3:30 PM-6:29 PM | This course introduces students to selections from the best literary works written in Hebrew over the last hundred years in a relaxed seminar environment. The goal of the course is to develop skills in critical reading of literature in general, and to examine how Hebrew authors grapple with crucial questions of human existence and national identity. Topics include: Hebrew classics and their modern "descendents," autobiography in poetry and fiction, the conflict between literary generations, and others. Because the content of this course changes from year to year, students may take it for credit more than once. This course is conducted in Hebrew and all readings are in Hebrew. Grading is based primarily on participation and students' literary understanding. | COML4300401, MELC4300401, MELC5410401 | ||||||
| JWST 5370-401 | Translating Literature: Theory and Practice | Kathryn Hellerstein | R 1:45 PM-3:44 PM | The greats all have something to say about translation. The Hebrew poet H. N. Bialik is attributed with saying that “he who reads the Bible in translation is like a man who kisses his bride through a veil.” That, however, is a mistranslation: What Bialik really wrote was, “Whoever knows Judaism through translation is like a person who kisses his mother through a handkerchief." (http://benyehuda.org/bialik/dvarim02.html), a saying that he probably translated and adapted from Russian or German. (https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/116448/query-bialik-kissing-bride) Robert Frost wrote, “I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.” Walter Benjamin defines it: “Translation is a form. To comprehend it as a form, one must go back to the original, for the laws governing the translation lie within the original, contained in the issue of its translatability.” Lawrence Venuti rails against translation that domesticates, rather than foreignizes, thus betraying the foreign text through a contrived familiarity that makes the translator invisible. Emily Wilson wants her translation “to bring out the way I think the original text handles it. [The original text] allows you to see the perspective of the people who are being killed.” https://bookriot.com/2017/12/04/emily-wilson-translation-the-odyssey/ Is translation erotic? A form of filial love? Incestuous? A mode of communion, or idol worship? Is translation a magician’s vanishing trick? Is translation traitorous, transcendent? Maybe translation is impossible. But let’s try it anyways! In this graduate seminar, we will read key texts on the history and theory of translating literature, and we sample translations from across the centuries of the “classics,” such as the Bible and Homer. We will consider competing translations into English of significant modern literary works from a variety of languages, possibly including, but not limited to German, Yiddish, French, Hebrew, and Russian. These readings will serve to frame each student’s own semester-long translation of a literary work from a language of her or his choice. The seminar offers graduate students with their skills in various language an opportunity to take on a significant translation project within a circle of peers. | COML5370401, GRMN5370401 | ||||||
| JWST 5770-401 | Inside the Archive | Liliane Weissberg | CANCELED | What is an archive, and what is its history? What makes an archival collection special, and how can we work with it? In this course, we will discuss work essays that focus on the idea and concept of the archive by Jacques Derrida, Michel de Certeau, Benjamin Buchloh, Cornelia Vismann, and others. We will consider the difference between public and private archives, archives dedicated to specific disciplines, persons, or events, and consider the relationship to museums and memorials. Further questions will involve questions of property and ownership as well as the access to material, and finally the archive's upkeep, expansion, or reduction. While the first part of the course will focus on readings about archives, we will invite curators, and visit archives (either in person or per zoom) in the second part of the course. At Penn, we will consider four archives: (1) the Louis Kahn archive of architecture at Furness, (2) the Lorraine Beitler Collection of material relating to the Dreyfus affair, (3) the Schoenberg collection of medieval manuscripts and its digitalization, and (4) the University archives. Outside Penn, we will study the following archives and their history: (1) Leo Baeck Institute for the study of German Jewry in New York, (2) the Sigmund Freud archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., (3) the German Literary Archive and the Literturmuseum der Moderne in Marbach, Germany, and (4) the archives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. | ARTH5690401, COML5771401, GRMN5770401 |