2023-01-25
- The Program in Jewish Culture & Society is pleased to announce that Marie Jensen has been awarded the Spring 2023 Ronald H. Filler Jewish Studies scholarship. Jensen is from Grand Ridge, Illinois, and is a senior majoring in English and German with a minor in Jewish Studies. After graduation, she plans to pursue a Masters degree in German Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics at UIUC. After...
2022-11-18 - The Program in Jewish Culture and Society-affiliated faculty member Brett Kaplan spoke at an event to mark the launch of her new book Rare Stuff on October 27th. The talk took place at the Author's Corner of Illini Union bookstore, where Kaplan was introduced by Professor Eugene Avrutin before making acknowledgments and reading from the novel. The full video of Kaplan's reading and Q...
2022-08-26 - Michael Mayer, the award-winning director, is the Israel Studies Project visiting scholar in Fall 2022. Michael Mayer’s feature debut, Out in the Dark, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, sold to more than 40 countries, played in over 130 film festivals, and won 27 awards including a GLAAD Media Award nomination. Mayer’s second feature, Happy Times, won Best...
2022-08-25 - The Program in Jewish Culture & Society is pleased to announce that Tamar Dallal has been awarded the Fall 2022 Ronald H. Filler Jewish Studies scholarship. Tamar is a senior in Engineering Physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, hailing from the Chicago suburb of Skokie. Over the past three years, she has participated in a wide range of academic and extracurricular activities...
2022-02-28 - We want to share and endorse the statement issued by our colleagues in the Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Center and Slavic Languages and Literatures earlier this week. We join them in expressing our horror and repudiation for the military assault on Ukraine. Many of us have historical and contemporary ties to Ukraine, and we also decry Vladimir Putin’s use of “de-Nazification” as a...- 2021-10-18 - Jewish archives from central Illinois to be stored at University Photo Courtesy of Dana Miller/Mervis Archives A photo of the old Congregation Anshe Knesset Israel Synagogue that stood at 949 N. Walnut St. from 1929-1991 is shown above. Jewish archives from...
- 2021-06-03 - Zionism: A Global History examines the history of the Zionist movement from a global perspective. The course is designed for students with no prior knowledge of Jewish, European, or Middle Eastern history. The goal is to survey how Zionism emerged as a widespread political movement and, in the process, helped create an...
- 2021-06-01 - AIS program can be found here. I am delighted to welcome you to the University of Illinois for the 37th Association of Israel Studies annual conference—even if it is only virtually. For 14 years the University has been home to the Israel Studies...
2021-05-18 - Summer 2021 YISH 320: Lit Responses to the Holocaust In this film course we will be watching and discussing Holocaust Cinema. We will consider different genres, including documentaries, testimony, comedy, drama, musicals and action-adventure films. We consider films from different locations, including the UK, the US,...- 2021-04-16 - Given the ongoing conditions of the pandemic, we are inviting students to apply for Summer 2021 funding to support participation in an international conference or enrollment in a virtual language course being offered from outside the U.S. This scholarship is open to all graduate students in Jewish Studies and Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies who plan to conduct research,...
- 2021-04-02 - Yossi Klein Halevi and Mohammad Darawshe, two internationally-recognized thinkers on navigating the deeply-held divisions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will speak during a live Zoom event moderated by Chancellor Robert J. Jones on Tuesday, April 6 at 12 pm. This event is free and registration is open to the public. Register at go.illinois.edu/...
- 2021-03-05 - Professor Rachel S. Harris has written an opinion piece in Ha'aretz (2-March-2021) about efforts to disqualify Ibtisam Mara’ana and prevent her from standing for election and the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban issued in February. Opinion | Israeli and Palestinian Men Are Uniting – to Destroy This Arab Woman’s Political Career ...
2021-02-12 - On Wednesday, February 10th, we joined with the Center for African Studies and Illini Hillel to co-sponsor a talk by Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, a Ugandan rabbi serving the Abayudaya, a Baganda community in eastern Uganda. Rabbi Sizomu is the current leader of the 100-year old Abayudaya community of almost 2,000 Jews living in rural villages in Eastern Uganda. He is the grandson of community...
2020-04-20 - The Program in Jewish Culture & Society here at the University of Illinois is excited to announce yet another virtual event for our students and staff to stay engaged in learning and thought during these uncertain times. The next event will be a discussion of the work of Etgar Keret, who visited campus a couple of years ago to discuss his life and how he got to where he is today. Etgar is an...
2020-03-17 - In accordance with the university policies and the advice of public health professionals, the Program in Jewish Culture & Society and the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies office will remain closed until further notice. We also have suspended our public events for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. We hope to reschedule these programs...