Language is a uniquely human instinct. It is also our most important cultural artifact. This course examines language as an instinct and as a social construct that dynamically shapes and is shaped by history, class, status, ethnicity, gender, and institutions like the media and the law. (Gen.Ed. U, SB)

Language is a uniquely human instinct. It is also our most important cultural artifact. This course examines language as an instinct and as a social construct that dynamically shapes and is shaped by history, class, status, ethnicity, gender, and institutions like the media and the law. (Gen.Ed. U, SB)

Historically, the figure of the "Jew" has been thought of as male. Making male experience normative has in turn shaped how Judaism itself has been understood. Shifting the basic terms and focus to include attention to women, gender, and sexuality significantly re-shapes our understanding of both Judaism and of Jewish culture/history. This course not only "fills in the blanks" of the missing women of Jewish history and tradition, but attends to questions of contemporary forms of Jewish women's and men's gendered lives, identities and sexualities.

This course explores how various cultures through time and space have interacted with the natural environment in an effort to achieve material, spiritual, and medical well-being. (Gen. Ed. HS, G)

Major writers, works, themes, and critical issues comprising the literature of the Holocaust. Exploration of the narrative responses to the destruction of European Jewry and other peoples during World War II (including diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, video testimonies, and memorials). (Gen.Ed. AL, G)

Major writers, works, themes, and critical issues comprising the literature of the Holocaust. Exploration of the narrative responses to the destruction of European Jewry and other peoples during World War II (including diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, video testimonies, and memorials). (Gen.Ed. AL, G)

An examination of transformations in the Jewish family and attitudes toward sexuality in Judaism, from antiquity to the present. Topics include love, sexuality, and desire in the Bible and Talmud; marriage and divorce through the ages; position and treatment of children; sexuality and spirituality in the Kabbalah; sexual stereotypes in American Jeish culture and Israeli society. Interdisciplinary readings draw on biblical and rabbinic literature, comparative Christian and Islamic sources, historical and scientific research on family and sexuality, and contemporary fiction.

Major writers, works, themes, and critical issues comprising the literature of the Holocaust. Exploration of the narrative responses to the destruction of European Jewry and other peoples during World War II (including diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, video testimonies, and memorials). (Gen.Ed. AL, G)

Major writers, works, themes, and critical issues comprising the literature of the Holocaust. Exploration of the narrative responses to the destruction of European Jewry and other peoples during World War II (including diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, video testimonies, and memorials). (Gen.Ed. AL, G)

Major writers, works, themes, and critical issues comprising the literature of the Holocaust. Exploration of the narrative responses to the destruction of European Jewry and other peoples during World War II (including diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama, video testimonies, and memorials). (Gen.Ed. AL, G)