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.

This course deals with the early modern history of the Jews between the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and the emancipation of the Jews (1790/91) in the wake of the French Revolution. In Jewish history, the early modern period forms a distinct epoch between the Middle Ages and the modern era, which has certain characteristics. It is an epoch in which, in the wake of the rise of mercantilism and European colonialism, but also as a result of expulsion and violence, numerous new communities are established throughout the world; it is a time in which the mobility of Jews increases immensely, in which community autonomy is consolidated, and at the same time rabbinic authority is plunged into a fundamental crisis; it is a period in which a knowledge revolution takes place through the invention of the printing press and in which the Jewish curriculum is expanded by secular sciences; it is a time in which the foundations of the Enlightenment are laid and at the same time mystical movements such as Sabbateanism and Hasidism emerge; and it is an era in which the question of what is Jewish is renegotiated. Geographically, the course deals with places as different as Amsterdam and Vilnius, London and Prague, Venice and Bordeaux, Smyrna and Frankfurt, New York and Reçife, Safed and Salonika. Textbooks and Materials: David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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Requirements class fulfills