Spring 2020  |  JWST 3011 Section 001: Jewish American Literature: Religion, Culture, and the Immigrant Experience (55049)

Instructor(s)
Class Component:
Lecture
Credits:
3 Credits
Grading Basis:
Student Option
Instructor Consent:
No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:
In Person Term Based
Class Attributes:
UMNTC Liberal Education Requirement
Meets With:
ENGL 3011 Section 001
RELS 3628 Section 001
Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
 
01/21/2020 - 05/04/2020
Tue, Thu 02:30PM - 03:45PM
UMTC, East Bank
Lind Hall 303
Enrollment Status:
Open (8 of 10 seats filled)
Course Catalog Description:
Immigrant? Jewish? American? What do these labels mean, why are they applied, and do they ever cease to be applicable? Can we distinguish religion from culture, and what are the implications when we try? Why is it frequently asked whether Saul Bellow was "really" a Jewish writer, but it is impossible to read Philip Roth as anything other than that? How does Grace Paley's "Jewishness" come through even when she is writing about non-Jewish characters? We will address these issues and others as we explore the literature growing out of the Jewish immigrant experience in America, as well as the literature by Jewish writers more firmly, though still sometimes anxiously, rooted in American soil. In this course we will engage in a highly contextualized and historicized study of Jewish American literature from the 19th century to today. We will discover in these texts how inherited Jewish culture and literary imaginings, developed over centuries of interaction between Jewish communities and the "outside world," get reexamined, questioned, rejected, reimagined, reintegrated, and transformed within the crucible of American experience. The discussions that ensue will also provide a framework for engaging with the creative energies and cultural productivity of more recent immigrant communities in the United States and beyond. Immigration and the experience of immigrant communities continues to be at the forefront of American consciousness, as immigrants work to create new meanings and new narratives for their lives, and as those who immigrated before them provide contested meanings for the impact of immigration on their own narratives. This course, though grounded in Jewish narratives, will therefore provide students with an expanded vocabulary and perspective for engaging in this central and very current debate within the American experience.
Class Description:
Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
Textbooks:
https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/55049/1203

ClassInfo Links - Spring 2020 Jewish Studies Classes

To link directly to this ClassInfo page from your website or to save it as a bookmark, use:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=JWST&catalog_nbr=3011&term=1203
To see a URL-only list for use in the Faculty Center URL fields, use:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=JWST&catalog_nbr=3011&term=1203&url=1
To see this page output as XML, use:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=JWST&catalog_nbr=3011&term=1203&xml=1
To see this page output as JSON, use:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=JWST&catalog_nbr=3011&term=1203&json=1
To see this page output as CSV, use:
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?subject=JWST&catalog_nbr=3011&term=1203&csv=1
Schedule Viewer
8 am
9 am
10 am
11 am
12 pm
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm
s
m
t
w
t
f
s
?
Class Title

ClassInfo created and maintained by the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

If you have questions about specific courses, we strongly encourage you to contact the department where the course resides.