[Jewish] New Spring Course! Israel: Texts and Contexts, please spread the word

[Rachel Rubinstein]

HACU 246: Israel: Texts and Contexts
Spring 2012 Wednesdays 1-3:50, Library 2nd Floor

Justin Cammy (who is awesome!) will be offering a course at Hampshire this
spring that explores Zionism and contemporary Israeli society through
literature (and some film).  This course is an opportunity for students to
engage with novels, short stories, film, and political essays that were
critical in forming and interpreting Israel’s founding myths and collective
identity, and that offer thoughtful critiques of the country’s social and
political realities. This is an opportunity for students to study Israeli
culture in an academic setting that emphasizes close, critical reading of
primary texts and informed, respectful discussion. Authors will include
Theodore Herzl (founder of political Zionism), S.Y. Agnon (Nobel Prize winner),
S. Yizhar (who explored the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem),
internationally acclaimed novelists Amos Oz (on the kibbutz movement), A.B.
Yehoshua (who challenges historical meta-narratives), David Grossman (whose
personal history of loss and political activism mirrors the fate of
contemporary Israel), Sayed Keshua (a Palestinian Israeli who writes about
hopes and fears of Israel’s Palestinian citizens), Emuna Elon (a novelist and
journalist who lives in a West Bank settlement), and many, many others.  At its
core, we will explore the relationship between literature and politics in order
to arrive at a more mature, nuanced understanding of the tensions and
contradictions that make Israel a topic of significant interest to students
interested in the Middle East.

This is a one-time academic offering at Hampshire that will meet once per week,
on Wednesday afternoons from 1-3:50. It is open to students at all levels and
there are no prerequisites.

Faculty Bio:
Dr. Justin Cammy is Director of the Program in Middle East Studies and Associate
Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at Smith College. He has
a B.A. in Middle East Studies from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Near
Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. Professor Cammy
first visited the Middle East in 1988, and has since returned more than two
dozen times to live, work, study, and research. In 2007 he spent seven months
as a visiting scholar at the Harman Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the
Hebrew University, and he has taught at Tel Aviv University three times at its
summer Yiddish institute. In summer 2011 he co-directed Smith College’s
inaugural Global Engagement Seminar to Jerusalem, a course that combined an
academic seminar on the religious history and contested politics of Jerusalem
with a two month student internship. He has also traveled in Egypt, Jordan,
Syria, and Morocco. In 2006, he was awarded the Sherrerd Prize for
Distinguished Teaching at Smith.







Rachel Rubinstein
Associate Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies
Dean of Academic Support and Advising
Hampshire College
(413) 559-5821