Hebrew and Judaic Studies
Modern Hebrew language instruction is available at Bryn Mawr through the elementary level. Students may take Intermediate Modern Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania. At Swarthmore College biblical Hebrew is offered in a two-semester sequence through the first-year level, and additional reading in Classical Jewish texts is available in directed reading, one-half-credit courses. At Haverford, Judaic Studies courses are offered by the Department of Religion. Bryn Mawr also offers several courses which complement Haverford's offerings in Judaic Studies. All of these courses are listed in the Tri-Co Course Guide under the heading "Hebrew and Judaic Studies."
College Foreign Language Requirement
The College's foreign language requirement may be satisfied by completing HEBR B001 Elementary Hebrew and HEBR B002 Elementary Hebrew with a minimum grade of at least 2.0.
The College does not currently offer a Major or Minor in Hebrew & Judaic Studies.
HEBR B001 Elementary Hebrew (1 Unit)
This year-long course is designed to teach beginners the skills of reading, writing, and conversing in Modern Hebrew. It will provide students with knowledge of the Hebrew writing system – its alphabet (Square letters for reading, cursive for writing) and vocalization – as well as core aspects of grammar and syntax. Diverse means will be utilized: Textbook, supplementary printed material, class conversations, presentations by students of dialogues or skits that they prepare in advance, and written compositions. This course, followed by Semesters 3 and 4 taken elsewhere, lays a foundation for reading of Modern Hebrew literary works.
Tagged with: Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies
College Requirement(s): Course does not meet an Approach
Typically Offered: Every Fall
HEBR B002 Elementary Hebrew (1 Unit)
This is a continuation of HEBR B001, the year-long course is designed to teach beginners the skills of reading, writing, and conversing in Modern Hebrew. It will provide students with knowledge of the Hebrew writing system – its alphabet (Square letters for reading, cursive for writing) and vocalization – as well as core aspects of grammar and syntax. Diverse means will be utilized: Textbook, supplementary printed material, class conversations, presentations by students of dialogues or skits that they prepare in advance, and written compositions. This course, followed by Semesters 3 and 4 taken elsewhere, lays a foundation for reading of Modern Hebrew literary works.
Tagged with: Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies
College Requirement(s): Course does not meet an Approach
Typically Offered: Every Spring
HEBR B206 Jewish Literature, Again and Again (1 Unit)
Jewish Literature, Again and Again' fulfills various Approaches to Inquiry by combining close literary analysis with historical and cross-cultural study. Students engage in Critical Interpretation through close reading of texts ranging from biblical narratives and medieval poetry to modern novels, films, and contemporary critical essays. The course also advances Cross-Cultural Analysis by examining Jewish literary traditions across diverse Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi communities and across multiple linguistic and geographic contexts. Finally, through its chronological structure—from ancient sources to contemporary literature—the course encourages Inquiry into the Past, inviting students to trace how Jewish storytelling reflects and reshapes human experience across historical periods.
Tagged with: Hebrew and Judaic Studies
College Requirement(s):
- Critical Interpretation (CI)
- Inquiry into the Past (IP)
Typically Offered: Only Once
HEBR B207 Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Migration (1 Unit)
This upper-level seminar, Mobility and Modernity: A Jewish History of Modern Migration, immerses students in the vibrant history of not only Jewish migration, but how Jewish mobility became intertwined with vital trends in international migration, ranging from the rise of mercantilist trade networks in the early modern period to the codification of international migration law in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Over the semester, students will follow Sephardi merchants who traversed the Mediterranean, working-class Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, and Holocaust survivors who confronted their newfound statelessness. Like their historical subjects, students will travel the globe, from seventeenth century Surinam to the Soviet Union. This seminar encourages students to ask incisive questions, as they deliberate the legal, social, and cultural history of not only Jewish migration, but global migration. What circumstances compelled Jews to move? How did migration place Jews in new political systems, power dynamics, and cultural milieus? And finally, how do narratives of Jewish movement enhance our understanding of provocative themes at the center of the history of migration, such as open borders, free trade, forced deportation, and assimilation?
Tagged with:
- History
- History at Haverford
College Requirement(s):
- Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)
- Inquiry into the Past (IP)
- Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)
Writing in the Major: Writing Intensive
Typically Offered: Only Once
HEBR B271 Topics in Judaic Studies: Histories of Jewish Identity (1 Unit)
What makes one Jewish? Is it a matter of religion, ethnicity, race, nationality, culture, or kinship? Or, conversely, is being Jewish a symbolic, universal identity, associated with any person or collective that encounters persecution and dispossession? Must a Jew be religious? Must a Jew be a Zionist? Can a Jewish person be antisemitic? Can one choose to be Jewish, or not? In the modern world, with the emergence of both secularization and religious fundamentalism, internationalism and nation-states, capitalism and communism, the primary marker of Jew or Jewish as a member of a stateless, marginalized minority has undergone a fundamental revision. This course brings together historical and literary narratives that strive to answer these and related questions. We will engage myriad voices, Jewish and non-Jewish—including your own. Traversing three hundred years of Jewish history, we will encounter communities, individuals, and collectives across Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Israel/Palestine. We aim to recognize not only the multiplicity of Jewish identities, but how such identities can be amalgamated, negotiated and reformed in different historical and cultural contexts.
Tagged with:
- History
- History at Haverford
College Requirement(s):
- Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)
- Inquiry into the Past (IP)
Typically Offered: Every other Fall
ITAL B306 Youth and Cultural Representation in Modern and Contemporary Italy (1 Unit)
Prerequisite(s): ITAL B102 or permission by the instructor.
Youth and Cultural Representation in Modern and Contemporary Italy: Intergenerational conflict, coming-of-age, and societal rebellion. This course examines the representation of youth in modern and contemporary Italian cultural production. It explores themes of rebellion, political unrest, social transformation, and regional identity, with particular attention to the ways in which youth—both real and imagined—has shaped poetic expression and critical discourse in Italy. Special emphasis is placed on a crucial period in the formation of Italian national identity and post WWII. The course also investigates the evolving representation of female coming-of-age narratives, considering how these depictions have been influenced by changing social contexts. By analyzing the reciprocal relationship between cultural change and literary genres, students will gain insight into the voices of youth across different historical moments and the ways in which young individuals emerge as subjects of their own narratives within contemporary discourse, focusing on cinema and narrative.
Tagged with:
- Film Studies
- Film Studies
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Hebrew and Judaic Studies
College Requirement(s): Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)
Typically Offered: Every other Spring
ITAL B316 Fascism and Masculinity (1 Unit)
In this course, we will explore the construction and evolution of models of masculinity and (less frequently) of womanhood, colonialism and nation-building ideals, by reflecting on nationalism, hierarchy, elitism, anti-egalitarianism, totalitarianism, antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and eugenics. We will discus the symbolical and political role of physical activities and sport from the Italian unification to WWII. We will study the legacy of Fascism in constructing national identity, military readiness, and health through sports to control and monitor sports organizations and individualist and white supremacist rhetoric.
Tagged with: Hebrew and Judaic Studies
Writing in the Major: Writing Attentive
Typically Offered: Occasionally
ITAL B325 Literature and Film, Literature into Films and Back (1-10 Unit)
This course is a critical analysis of Modern Italian society through cinematic production and literature, from the Risorgimento to the present. According to Alfred Hitchock’s little stories, two goats were eating the reel of a movie taken from a famous novel. “I liked the book better,” says one to the other. While at times we too chew on movies taken from books, our main objective will not be to compare books and films, but rather to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". Students will become acquainted with literary sources through careful readings; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. An important concern of this course will be to analyze the particularity of each film/book in relation to a set of themes -gender, death, class, discrimination, history, migration- through close textual analysis. We shall use contemporary Film theory and critical methodology to access these themes.
Tagged with:
- Comparative Literature at Bryn Mawr
- Comparative Literature at Haverford
- Film Studies
- Film Studies
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Hebrew and Judaic Studies
Typically Offered: Occasionally
POLS B283 Middle East Politics (1 Unit)
This course offers an overview on the contemporary politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the relevant social (mostly political) science work on it. It brings together empirical knowledge on domestic and transnational politics in different countries of the region and how empirical political science around the big questions is conducted. Each module of the course revolves around a central question that has been keeping social and political scientists busy in the last decades: What triggers risky protest movements in authoritarian settings? Why has the MENA region remained authoritarian despite successive global waves of democratization? Under which conditions do transitions to democracies succeed? Do monarchies in the Middle East have an advantage in ensuring political stability, and if so, why? Is it impossible to ensure good governance and peace at the same time in divided societies? What motivates people to take up arms in the name of religion and sect? What are the reasons behind the economic underdevelopment of the MENA region? Students are also invited to think about these “big questions” and take MENA countries as their case studies, while at the same significantly enhancing their contextual knowledge about the region. No prerequisites, but either some prior familiarity with the Middle East or a prior political science course encouraged.
Tagged with:
- Hebrew and Judaic Studies
- International Studies
- International Studies
- Middle Eastern/Central Asian/North African Studies
- Political Science at Haverford
College Requirement(s): Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)
Typically Offered: Every Year