Please Note: The course dates have been adjusted from those listed in our fall brochure in order to avoid Jewish High Holy Days. The course will now begin on October 11 rather than September 27. We hope this makes the course more accessible to everyone wishing to participate. See you in class!

This seminar will examine the ways in which Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness have been represented in German works from 1500 to the present. We will view the different ways in which Jews are portrayed, ranging from the imperfectly assimilated community member to the inscrutable alien, from the moral exemplar to the menace to the community. The readings will be placed in the context of Jewish settlement in and assimilation to the German-speaking world, as well as various forms of Gentile resistance to this settlement and assimilation, ranging from the traditional religiously-based anti-Judaism to the economically based resentment of the Jew as usurer or exploiter, to the nationally based ostracism of the Jew as non-German in the early nineteenth century, to the racially motivated antisemitism of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Texts will range from those trying to combat anti-Jewish prejudice to blatantly antisemitic texts, with some very ambiguous ones.