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ISRAEL STUDIES COURSES

FALL 2025

ISRL 120 - Intro to Israeli Literature – Gen Ed: G, H
Cross listed: JUST 120 / COLI 180P
Time: M/W/F 11:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m.
Instructor: Lior Libman

This survey course introduces students to texts (poems, short stories, novels) and themes (nation-building, conflict, gender constructions, ethnic and religious tensions) in Israeli literature from 1948 to the present. We will place literary works within their historical, cultural and political contexts and examine them to illustrate the main features of the time. Texts will be read in translation. No previous knowledge is required.The course is a Core Course for the Minor in Israel Studies, a Literature Course for the Major/Minor in Hebrew, and an Area Course in Israel Studies for the Major/Minor in Judaic Studies.

ISRL 150 – Modern Israel - Gen Ed: N
Cross listed: JUST 150 / HIST 150 / HMRT 289B
Time: T/R 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Instructor: Shay Rabineau

This course presents an overview of the history of Israel from its origins in the Zionist movement to the present. Key topics include: political relations and international diplomacy leading to the establishment of the state in 1948; Israel's wars with its neighbors; conflict with the Palestinians; religion and government; internal divisions between Ashkenazic and Sephardi/Mizrachi Jews; and Israeli cultural life. No previous knowledge is assumed or required. Students who had taken the course under the original number will not receive credit for re-taking the course with the new number.

ISRL 180A - Middle East, 600-Present  – Gen Ed: I,N,T,W,G
Cross listed: JUST 284G / ARAB 180C / HIST 185A
Time: M/W 12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Instructor: Kent Schull

This course traces the origins, development, and transformation of the Middle East and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th Century CE until the 21st Century. This course will concentrate on the historical evolution of the Middle East and North Africa in terms of political, religious, cultural, economic, social, institutional aspects, and its relationship with other major faith and social traditions throughout the world. While the course is primarily chronological, the following themes will be emphasized: religious traditions and practice; inter-cultural exchanges through trade, diplomacy, migrations, and war; legal traditions; the arts; popular culture; conquest; the impact of European colonization, decolonization, and the rise of nationalism; gender constructions and the status of women; and the relationship between religion and politics. Students are assessed through their class participation, attendance, two-midterm examinations, and a final paper.

Upcoming Mini Course - Cultures and Societies in Israel
Instructor: Talia Katz

What can studying everyday life reveal about Israeli society? Media accounts of Israel often portray life in the region through events of spectacular violence, accounts that reinscribe generalized figures of “The Israeli” or “The Palestinian.” In this course, we take the anthropological method of studying everyday life — through ethnography and its companion methods — as our route through Israeli culture, politics, institutions, and society. We focus on the fine grains of experience within a diversity of communities: including (but not limited to) Holocaust survivors, Palestinian citizens of Israel, the ultra-Orthadox, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and African asylum seekers. We ask questions such as:  how does the eight-year-old child of a Filipino migrant in Tel Aviv experience identity? How do family planning policies impact the way couples across religious sects make reproductive choices? What do washing machines and restaurant bills have to do with the everyday life of war? As we examine these questions, we track how macro-level forces shape intimate relations and are negotiated by individuals and communities.

ISRL 327 - Israeli PalestinianConf in Lit - Gen Ed: H, O
Cross listed: JUST 380C / COLI 380C / HMRT 389A
Time: W 2:45 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.
Instructor: Lior Libman

The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been represented in a wide body of Israeli and Palestinian literary works of varied genres. In this course, we will read, analyze and discuss, side by side, poems, short stories and novels by both Israeli and Palestinian writers exploring questions of homeland, exile and return, longing and belonging, Self and Other. We will examine the relationships between historical, political and literary narratives, and the ways in which images and metaphors both reflect and shape national affinities. We will also juxtapose the geo-political conflict with other core issues such as religion, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.

ISRL 380C - Holocaust Literature - Gen Ed: C, H
Cross listed: JUST 341 / COLI 380B / ENG 380O
Time: W 4:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Instructor: Paul Burch

Students in this course read literature of the Holocaust, the Churban, or the Shoah—including diaries, journals, memoirs, fiction, poetry, and works of popular culture, informed by the belief that literary responses to the Holocaust are, as the poet Paul Celan has written, in themselves "material evidence of that which-occurred." The course includes works by First Generation writers, victims and survivors of the Shoah who bear direct witness to the horror, as well as pieces by Second Generation writers—that is, children and “offspring” of Holocaust survivors who bear witness to the witnesses and to events that they did not live through but that shaped their lives. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Cross-listed with English and Comparative Literature. THIS COURSE IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS.

ISRL 385Z - World War I and the Jews - Gen Ed: G,W
Cross listed: JUST 380A / HIST 381N
Time: W 4:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Instructor: Allan Arkush

This course will investigate Jewish involvement in World War I, in all of the major belligerent countries, as well as the ways in which the war altered the Jewish world. Topics will include anti-Jewish pogroms on the Eastern Front, the rise in anti-Semitism in the ranks of the German Army, the worldwide lobbying for the Balfour Declaration, and the way in which the war reshaped Eastern European Jewry.

ISRL 386K - Religion & Politics in the ME
Cross listed: PLSC 386H
Time: M/W 3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Instructor: Ekrem  Karakoc

This is an International Relations/International Security seminar, dealing with how nuclear politics have shaped the Middle East. We will start by covering the history of nuclear politics and key concepts of nuclearization in international politics – including deterrence, proliferation, restraint – as well as their critiques. We will proceed to apply these theories to the Middle East, looking at the emergence of military and non-military nuclear programs and reactions to them. The course deals with nuclear bombs, energy, and other technology through a consideration of both their material and symbolic dimensions. In addition, we will discuss the idea of a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the Middle East, including the impediments facing its establishment. The course pays special attention to the Israeli nuclear program and Israeli nuclear policies in the Middle East and beyond.

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