This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

The class explores the history of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel in all its complexity and contradictions. What is Zionism? What are its roots? Is it a liberation movement? A religious cause? A colonial ideology? A set of state policies? And what is the relationship between Zionism and the modern State of Israel? How do Zionism and Israel look different when considered from the standpoint of Jewish, Palestinian, European, or Middle Eastern history? Exploring Zionism and Israel from its roots in the nineteenth century to the present, this class offers in-depth knowledge and discussion on all of these topics and more. We begin by discussing the longstanding attachments of Jews to the land of Israel throughout centuries of exile, and the particular predicament of Jews in nineteenth-century Europe that helped to bring about the advent of modern political Zionism. We proceed to explore various strands of political, labor, cultural, and religious Zionism that developed as the movement became organized and initial waves of Jewish migration came to Palestine, and the growing challenge of two peoples and cultures with deep attachments to the same land. Throughout, we emphasize the importance of two topics that challenged the Zionist project from its early years: the “Arab question” and the issue of the place of religion in a modern Jewish state. Subsequent lessons will trace the Zionists’ complex relationship to the British empire; attitudes of Zionism toward the native Arabs of Palestine; the building of the Yishuv; the creation of modern Hebrew culture in realms from language to the arts; the rise of both Labor and Revisionist Zionism; the impact of antisemitism and the Holocaust in Europe; and the Arab resistance to Zionism that exploded in the 1929 riots, the 1936 Great Arab Revolt, and the 1948 War and refugee crisis. The portion of the class that deals with the years of the state addresses the consequences of Israel’s founding for the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Palestine; the waves of Jewish migration from surrounding Arab and Muslim countries and Israel’s changing ethnic makeup; a series of military conflicts; the way that the Israeli victory of 1967 dramatically transformed the region and unleashed new political and cultural forces within Israeli society; the emergence of the Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and the rise of the settlement movement and the Israeli right; the Camp David Accords and persistent efforts to trade “Land for Peace”; and then the First Intifada, the Oslo Peace Process, and its collapse at the start of the twenty-first century. We read the texts of important Zionist thinkers including Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky, and Begin, as well as some of the most important critics of Zionism such as Edward Said, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Yasser Arafat. We also explore a range of scholarly perspectives on the conflict between Jewish and Palestinian nationalisms and Israel and its Arab neighbors. In addition, we will look at short stories, novels, and memoirs by authors like Amos Oz, David Grossman, AB Yehoshua, Elias Khoury, and Ghassan Kanafani, and the poetry of Yehudah Amichai and Mahmoud Darwish. Our class sessions will include music of artists like Naomi Shemer and Ehud Manor that also evoke key moments in Israel’s history. Assessments will include essay, creative, and multimedia assignments that ask the students to assess the tensions between Israel’s biblical roots and avowedly secular founding figures and documents; and that encourage them to examine from multiple perspectives the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills