Time Schedule:
Maureen Jackson
SISJE 490
Seattle Campus
Content varies.
Class description
Jewish Communities of the Middle East This class studies Jewish communities of the Middle East through focusing onone of the region’s most significant historical Jewish communities – Sephardic Jewry. We will follow the expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century to their lives in the Ottoman empire, Turkey and beyond. How did Jews and their neighbors live together, shaping local arts, economies, relationships, cuisines? How were Jewish communities governed under Islamic administrations? What kinds of historical transformations took place in Sephardic communities across the centuries? In the modern period we will investigate issues of nationalism, citizenship and migration, as well as how Sephardic Jews are remembered today. To probe these questions, we will study primary and secondary sources, including historical scholarship, memoirs, fiction, film, and music. We will discuss how historians think about and evaluate sources, interrogate historical ‘objectivity,’ and develop tools for critically reading diverse historical narratives. Required Texts: Aron Rodrigue and Esther Benbassa, Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries. University of California Press, 2000 [1993]. Leon Skiaky, Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2003 [1946]. Course reading packet.
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