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Alumni spotlight: Jovana Babovic
Jovana Babovic is an affiliated scholar at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. She holds a PhD from the Department of History at Illinois, with expertise in East European, Russia, and comparative urban history. She earned MA degrees from NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and Central European University in Budapest as well as a BA in French language and literature from Smith College. Jovana's forthcoming book Metropolitan Belgrade: Class and Culture in Interwar Yugoslavia, will be...
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.