131-030 From the Shtetl to Postmodernity

Formerly available as 131-122 or 131-231/331. Students who have completed 131-122 or 131-231/331 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually 25 points of first-year history, see Prerequisites, or Jewish studies, see Prerequisites.

This subject will examine transformations in the cultural modes of being Jewish in the 20th century, focusing in particular on how these developments in the ways that Jews 'imagined' themselves as Jews relate to major political, social and cultural changes occurring during this time. One of the main questions to be addressed in this subject will be how Jewish models of cultural reinterpretation, reinvention, and re-imagining relate to more general developments in Western modernity, and to the shift to postmodern forms of understanding human cultural existence. Topics to be explored will include the relationship of Jews and Jewish modes of existence to modernity and postmodernity; the effects of the great migrations from Europe around the turn of the 20th century; the development of Jewish revolutionary visions and politics; the myths and realities of the European shtetl; the rise of fascism and its challenge/threat to Jewish social and cultural existence; Jewish responses to the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry; the relationship of Israel's foundation to the Holocaust; contemporary challenges to diasporic identities in North America and Australia; and the future of Israel.