JWST 346 - Studies in Jewish Thought and History

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Advanced study in selected aspects of Jewish thought and history.

May be taken more than once for credit when the content changes.

Topic for 2015/16b: Jews & Art. (Same as RELI 346 ) This course investigates the ways in which Jews have used visual culture to express religious ideas and address political circumstances, primarily in the premodern era. It interrogates the ideas of creation and creativity, the permissibility or impermissibility of the image in Judaism, the authorship of “Jewish” visual culture and whether/why this matters, the construction of individual and communal Jewish identity through art, architecture, and texts, and relations-collusions as well as collisions- between Jews and non-Jews as they play out in the realm of visual and material culture. Mr. Epstein.

Prerequisite: any 100-level Religion course.

One 2-hour period.