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Alumni spotlight: Elana Jakel
Elana Jakel is Program Manager of the Initiative for the Study of Ukrainian Jewry at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). She received her doctorate in Russian and Soviet History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a dissertation entitled “‘Ukraine without Jews’? Nationality and Belonging in Soviet Ukraine, 1943-1948.” The Program in Jewish Culture and Society was her second home during graduate school. She has received a U.S. Student Fulbright Grant, the ...
Jewish History Since 1700
Traditional Jewish life has experienced significant changes since the 1700s. Once, a homogeneous community whose identity was mainly based on religious ties was replaced by modern Jewries with various identity markers. This course discusses the circumstances under which these processes developed, starting from Jewish emancipation in Western and Central Europe to the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel.
History of Antisemitism
Studies the negative representations of Judaism and Jews from antiquity to the modern world. Topics include: Greco-Roman concepts of the Jewish religion; medieval Christian symbolization of the demonic Jew; Jews and negative attitudes to capitalism; blood purity and blood libel; the rise of racial prejudice in the modern nation state; totalitarianism and genocide; antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Graduate Seminar: Introduction to Jewish Studies
Intensive study of select topics or issues in the study of religion.
Twentieth-Century Germany
The emphasis of this class is on what some observers refer to as the "German Century," the period between 1890 and 1990 when Germany emerged as the most modern, the most revolutionary, and the most belligerent nation-state in Europe. Germany was the site of extraordinary cultural innovation and often lethal political experimentation; it fought two world wars. The course will track the political, social, and cultural developments from the empire of Wilhelm II to the Wiemar Republic, the Third Reich, the division of Germany in the Cold War, and finally the reunification of the "Berlin Republic."