Judaic Studies Program (JUDS)
Description: Experience of Jews in Europe from 1933-1945. Issues of racism and religious prejudice and assumptions about humanism, tolerance and progress.
Description: The history of Jewish-Christian relations from the birth of Christianity until the present. Readings from primary and secondary sources as written by Jewish and Christian authors.
Description: Survey of the history of the Land of Israel from Biblical times to the present. Includes Roman and Byzantine rule, the Crusades, Islamic Palestine, Zionism and the modern state of Israel, and the religious importance of the land for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Description: Survey of the history of the Jewish people from Biblical times to the present. The Old Testament, Ancient Israel, the Talmud, the relationship to Christianity and Islam, persecution and self-government in the middle ages, Jewish philosophy and mysticism, emancipation, modern anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, Zionism, the modern state of Israel, and the Jewish experience in America.
Description: Twentieth and twenty-first century literature by major Jewish-American authors.
Prerequisites: JUDS/RELG 205 or permission.
Description: Dead Sea Scrolls, including the history and thought of the Qumran inhabitants, the archaeology of Qumran, and the corpus of the Scrolls. Concentration on the reading of selected primary texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Description: Traces the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the 19th century up to the present. Explores the role of ideology, political actors, social history, economic and infrastructural problems, and regional and international interaction, as well as prospects for peace in the 21st century. Examines the related historiographical debates, especially those focusing on the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1948 and 1967.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing.
Description: The cultural, social, and religious institutions of Ancient Israel from their antecedents in the Late Bronze Age until the Great Jewish Revolt and the beginning of Rabbinic Judaism. Literary works and material remains of the Israelites, and evidence from surrounding cultures.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Pre-1800 content.
Description: Traces the emergence and development of a distinctive Jewish culture and identity in medieval Europe and in the regions bordering the Mediterranean sea from the birth of rabbinic Judaism under the Roman empire until the seventeenth century orthodox synthesis of Talmudic learning, Kabbalah, and custom and Jewish responses to the Englightenment. Includes interaction of Jews with majority cultures (including the development of anti-Semitism), and the impact of Jews and Jewish learning upon western culture.
Prerequisites: Sophomore, junior, or senior standing.
Description: Examines the history of the Jewish people since the 18th century with geographical foci on Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Emphasis on the Jewish Enlightenment, emancipation and assimilation, anti-Semitism, migration to and adaptation in America, Zionism and the modern state of Israel.
Description: Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible and/or Old Testament from 400 BCE to 1800 CE. Readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, the Church Fathers and the Talmud, medieval and early modern Christian and Jewish biblical commentators.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing
Description: Europe-wide programs of persecution and genocide carried out under the auspices of the Nazi-German regime between 1933 and 1945. Focuses primarily on the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust, but also examines Nazi policies targeted against Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled Germans, and other groups. Events analyzed from the perspectives of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders.
Description: Role and status of women as depicted in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament. The stories and laws concerning women found in the Bible and from extra-biblical evidence.
Description: Examination of some principal texts in Jewish religion and philosophy from Biblical times to the 18th Century Enlightenment. The Hebrew Bible, and different approaches to it, as well as portions of the Talmud and the formation of rabbinic Judaism. Writings by philosophers including Maimonides, Saadia, and others, along with narratives, poetry and legends from the 17th and 18th Centuries, which saw the development of Hasidism as well as the emergence of rationalist philosophies.
Description: A multidimensional survey of the history of local and global antisemitism, look at the calamity of the Holocaust, the creation and challenges of Israel, and current antisemitic attitudes in Nebraska, the US, and the world.
Taught in English.
Description: Examination of complexities of women's experience under Nazism and Communism of Central and Eastern Europe.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Topics vary.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Letter grade only.
Description: Independent reading or research.
Description: Theories of natinalism and ethnic conflict. Case studies of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The post-Cold War era as multi-polar and multi-cilizational. The states and different cultures that compete for influence and authority to dominate the "New World order." The division of the world along ethnic, religious, and class lines rather than by ideology. The future of international politics and the reassessment of the causes of "conflicts of culture" and their containment.
Description: Israeli politics, society, and relations with its neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. Rise of Zionism and the Palestinian response to it; wars between Israel and Arab neighbors, and the eventual peace agreements between the two; the internal dynamics of Israeli political life; and state of Zionism today.