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Study Jewish Culture at Illinois

Jewish Studies events

Jewish Culture & Society News

2026 Award Winners
We mark the end of the 2025-2026 academic year by celebrating the successes of Jewish Studies and the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies students. Here are our award winners.  Matthew Fam (PhD Candidate, Department of Comparative & World Literature...
Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Jewish Children's Literature
The Program in Jewish Culture & Society welcomed Miriam Udel to campus on February 23rd as a part of the Krouse Family Visiting Scholar in Judaism and Western Culture Fund's annual lecture series, with additional support from the Center for Children's Books. Udel is the Judith London Evans...
An Evening with Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro
On the evening of January 26th, the Program in Jewish Culture & Society and Illini Hillel welcomed Dan Shapiro to campus as part of the Israel Studies Program, with additional support from the Jewish United Fund. Shapiro, a graduate of Uni High School in Urbana and son of Michael Shapiro, one...
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Alumni Spotlight

Helen Makhdoumian

Helen Makhdoumian is a Promise Armenian Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, where, under the mentorship of Professor Michael Rothberg of the Department of Comparative Literature, she is working on her book manuscript tentatively titled “A Map of This Place: Nested Memory and the Afterlives of Removal.” This project stems from her dissertation, which was supported by several departmental, graduate college, and campus-wide fellowships from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and which won the American Comparative Literature Association’s Charles...

Featured Courses: Fall 2026

RUSS 465

Jewish Culture in the Russian (and Soviet) Empire

This course explores what Jewish culture was in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and why it was significant.

HIST 400

Making of the Jewish Nation

"Making of the Jewish Nation" traces the development of different forms of Jewish nationalism (diaspora nationalism, Zionism, territorialism, etc.) and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

GER 261

The Holocaust in Context

Examines cultural representations of the Holocaust in literature, film, and critical essays.