Course Syllabus

Course Information
Course Number/Section HUHI 7368.501
Course Title Modernity, Culture, and the Jews
Term Spring 2007
Days & Times Wednesday, 7:00-9:45

Professor Contact Information

Professor Nils Roemer
Office Phone 972-8832769
Email Address nroemer@utdallas.edu
Office Location JO 5.516
Office Hours Wednesday 5-6pm by appointment

Course Pre-requisites, Co-requisites, and/or Other Restrictions

N/A

Course Description
This course examines the role of Jews in the creation of modern cultures. Jews’
contributions to modern arts and sciences have always intrigued commentators not in the
least in light of the disproportionate impact Jews made upon the non-Jewish world. The
course will be grounded in recent literature on diaspora cultures, transnationalism and
border crossing, and will view Jewish participation in modern culture as an area of
interaction, exchange and encounter. Readings amongst others will include Mathew
Arnold, T. S. Elliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Sigmund Freud, Georg Simmel, Walter
Benjamin and artists like Max Liebermann, Max Weber, and Marc Chagall.

Student Learning Objectives/Outcomes

Students will be introduced to the issue of influence and difference in a wide
interdisciplinary manner through a discussion of textual and visual sources. We will
discuss Jews’ position at both the cultural centers and the social margins of modernity
and analyze the functions that representations of ‘the Jew’ also assumed for non-Jewish
authors. Students will further their ability to critically review scholarly literature and
interpret sources from various perspectives.

Required Texts
Sigmund Freud, Moses Monotheism
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers

Required Materials
N/A
Suggested Course Materials
Suggested Readings/Texts

Special Issues:
“Modernism's Jews/Jewish Modernisms,” Modern Fiction Studies 51: 2 (Summer 2005)
"Eliot and Anti-Semitism: The Ongoing Debate." Modernism/Modernity 10 (2003): 1–70
and 417–54
Julius, Anthony, T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
Chevlowe, Susan. The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography. New York:
Jewish Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Cheyette, Bryan. Constructions of "the Jew" in English Literature and Society: Racial
Representations, 1987–1945. New York: Cambridge UP, 1993.
———, ed. Between "Race" and Culture: Representations of "the Jew" in English and
American Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996.
——— and Laura Marcus, eds. Modernity, Culture, and "the Jew." Stanford: Stanford
UP, 1998.
——— and Nadia Valman, eds. The Image of the Jew in European Liberal Culture,
1789–1914. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004.
Damon, Maria. "Gertrude Stein's Jewishness, Jewish Social Scientists, and the 'Jewish
Question.'" Modern Fiction Studies 42 (1996): 489–506.
Davison, Neil. James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity: Culture,
Biography, and "the Jew," Modernist Europe. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996.
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Genders, Races, and Religious Cultures in Modern American
Poetry, 1908–1934. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Gay, Peter. Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture
(1978)
Gillmann, Sander L. Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies, Histories, and Identities. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Heinze, Andrew. Jews and the American Soul: Human Nature in the Twentieth Century
(2004)
Nadel, Ira. Joyce and the Jews: Culture and Texts. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1996.
Nochlin, Linda, and Tamar Garb, eds. The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the
Construction of Identity. London: Thames, 1995.
Reizbaum, Marilyn. James Joyce's Judaic Other. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.
Schröder, Leena Kore. "Tales of Abjection and Miscegenation: Virginia Woolf's and
Leonard Woolf's 'Jewish' Stories." Twentieth Century Literature 49 (2003): 298–327.
Somerville, Siobhan. "Introduction: Queer Fictions of Race." Modern Fiction Studies 48
(2002): 787–94.

1. Introduction (January 10)

2. Intellectual History – History of Ideas (January 17)

“Introduction,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas (available

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/preface.html)
Journal of the History of Ideas
H-Ideas: http://www.h- net.org/~ideas/
David Harlan, “Intellectual History and the Return of Literature,” American Historical
Review 94: 3 (1989), 581-609 (available through JSTOR)
Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680-1715 (1967), 3-28
Roger Chartier, “Intellectual History or Sociocultural History,” Dominick LaCapra and
Steven L. Kaplan, eds., Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisal and New
Perspectives (1982), 13-43
Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries in Europe between
the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1992), 25-59
Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity (1997), 63-99

3. Jews and Other Moderns (January 24)

Georg Simmel “Stranger,” The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. and ed. by Kurt H.
Wolf (1950), 402-408
Isaac Deutscher, Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (1968), 25-41
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (2004), 4-39
Tamar Garb, “Introduction,” Nochlin, Linda, and Tamar Garb, eds. The Jew in the Text:
Modernity and the Construction of Identity (1995), 20-30
Homi K. Bhabha, "Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences," Bill Ashcroft, Gareth
Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, ed. The Post-colonial Studies Reader (1995), 206-209
(ebook)
James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late
Twentieth Century (1997), 17-47

4. The Enlightenment and Difference (January 31)

Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A
Documentary History, 2nd ed. (1995), part II, 7, 17-20 and part. III, nos. 1-5
Antoine Guénée, ed., Letters of Certain Jews to Monsieur Voltaire (1795), 19-36 (ebook)
Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity (2002), 25-49
Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (2003), 193-212
Adam Sutcliffe, “Can a Jew be a Philosophe? Isaac de Pinto, Voltaire, and Jewish
Participation in the European Enlightenment,” Jewish Social Studies 6:3 (2000) 31-51
(available through JSTOR)
Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815
(2003), 150-193 (ebook)

5. From Hebraism and Hellenism to Cultural Pluralism (February 7)

Terry Eagleton The Idea of Culture (2000), 51-86 (ebook)

Heinrich Heine, Jewish Stories and Hebrew Melodies by Heinrich Heine (1987), 73-81
and 82-109
Mathew Arnold
Mathew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1954), 129-144 (chapter “Hebraism and
Hellenism)

Herman Cohen
Alan Mittleman, "The Jew in Christian Culture" by Hermann Cohen:
An Introduction and Translation,” Modern Judaism 23.1 (2003) 51-73 (through JSTOR)

6. Antisemitism in Germany, the Dreyfus Affair and the International Racial

Conference (February 14)

Germany
JMW, part VII, nos. 19-20
“Prof. Lazarus on the Anti-Jewish Agitation,” Jewish Chronicle (January 16, 1880): 18
“The Judenhetze’ in Germany,” Jewish Chronicle (February 27, 1880): 4-5
“The Judenhetze’ in Germany,” Jewish Chronicle (March 26, 1880): 5
Michael Meyer, “Great Debate on Antisemitism: Jewish Reaction to New Hostility in
Germany, 1879-1881,” YLBI 11 (1966): 137-170

France
JMW, part VII, no. 23
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. 6 vols. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence
Kilmartin (1992-93), 4: 1-44
Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs. Dreyfus, Beilis,
Frank, 1894-1915 (1991), 94-128

International Racial Conference

Susan D. Pennybacke, “The Universal Races Congress, London Political Culture, and
Imperial Dissent, 1900-1939,” Radical History Review 92 (Spring 2005)

7. Jews in Modern Literature (February 21)

James Joyce
James Joyce, Ulysses (1990), 292-345 (chapter Cyclops)

T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot, "Gerontion", "Sweeney Among the Nightingales", "Burbank with a Baedeker:
Bleistein with a Cigar", "A Cooking Egg" in Collected Poems, 1929-1962 (1970), 29-37
and 51-76

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land. A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including
the Annotations of Ezra Pound (1971), 119, 121

Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers (also available as ebook)
8. Jews and Urban Culture in Vienna and Berlin (February 28)

Film: Stadt ohne Juden

Ernst Gombrich: “The Visual Arts in Vienna circa 1900,”

http://www.gombrich.co.uk/showdoc.php?id=28;
Steven Beller. Lecture from 2006 Conference:
http://www.austria.org/conference/pdf/beller.pdf
Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History (1989), 207-237
Scott Spector, "Modernism without Jews: A Counter-Historical Argument,"
Modernism/modernity 13: 4 (November 2006), 615-633 (available through JSTOR)
Paul Mendes-Flohr, ‘The Berlin Jew as Cosmopolitan’, Emily D. Bilski, ed. Berlin
Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918 (2000), 14-31
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture
(1978), 169-188
David Clay Large, "Out with the Ostjuden": The Scheunenviertel Riots in Berlin,
November 1923’, Christhard Hoffmann, Werner Bergmann, and Helmut Walser Smith,
eds., Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History (2002), 123-
140
Florian Krobb, ‘”Vienna Goes to Pot Without Jews"; Hugo Bettauer's Novel "Die Stadt
ohne Juden" ("The City Without Jews")’, Jewish Quarterly 41, 2 (1994), 17-20

Spring Break

9. Jews, Modernity, and Religion (March 14)

Franz Rosenzweig
Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (1961), 214-234 and 353-
358
Arnold Eisen, “Buber, Rosenzweig, and the Authority of the Commandments,”
Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community (1998), 188-215
Rivka Horwitz, “Franz Rosenzweig's Attitude Toward Kabbala and Myth,” Modern
Judaism 26:1 (2006) 31-54 (available through JSTOR)

Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss, “The Holy,“ and “Cohen’s Analysis of Spinoza’s Bible Science,” Leo
Strauss: The Early Writings (1921-1932) (2002), 75-79 and 140-172

Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, parts I-III
Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Atheism and the Making of Psychoanalysis, 115-156

Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin,” Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” Illuminations (1969), 253-264
Susan A. Handelman, Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in
Benjamin, Scholem and Levinas (1991), 149-173

10. Jews and Modern Art (March 21)

Raymond Williams, “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism,”

Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall, Iain Borden, eds., The City Cultures Reader, 2nd ed. (2000),
58-65

Max Liebermann
Peter Paret, ‘Modernism and the ‘Alien Element’ in German Art’, Emily D. Bilski, ed.,
Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918 (2000), 32-57

Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall: On Art and Culture, ed. by Benjamin Harshav (2003), 27-40
Benjamin Harshav, Marc Chagall and His Time: A Documentary Narrative (2004), 351-
361
Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars
(1995), 137-154

Max Weber
Matthew Baigell, “Max Weber’s Jewish Paintings,” American Jewish History (2000),
341–60 (available through JSTOR)
Matthew Baigell, Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years (2002), selection
W. Jackson Rushing, Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde (1995), 43-49

11. Jews and the Revolution (March 28)

Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A
Documentary History, 2nd ed. (1995), part VI, nos. 9, 10
Lucy Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition (1996), 441-447
Walter Benjamin, “Moscow Diary,” October 35 (Winter, 1985), 9-135 (available through
JSTOR)
Joseph Roth, The Wandering Jews (2001), 105-114
Benjamin Harshav, Marc Chagall and His Time: A Documentary Narrative (2004), 241-
276
Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (2004), 165-254
Daniel Soyer, “Back to the Future: American Jews Visit the Soviet Union in the 1920s
and 1930s,” Jewish Social Studies 6:3 (2000), 124-159 (available through JSTOR)
Irving Louis Horowitz, “The Jews and Modern Communism: The Sombart Thesis
Reconsidered,” Modern Judaism 6:1 (1986), 13-25 (available through JSTOR)
Katharina L. Ochse, “German-Speaking Jewish Writers Visit the Soviet Union and
Encounter and report on Eastern Jewry in Light of Lenin’s Decree Abolishing anti-
Semitism,” Sander Gilman and Jack Zipes, ed. The Yale Companion to Jewish Writing
and Thought in German Culture, 1096-1996 (1997), 363-367
12. In the American Melting Pot (April 4)
Film: Jazz Singer
Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1989), 1-7
and 120-150
Andrea Most, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (2004), 32-65

13. The Inheritance of Modernity, Culture, and the Jews (April 11)

James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth
Century (1997), 244-277
Susan Shapiro, `Ecriture judaique: Where Are the Jews in Western Discourse?'' Angelika
Bammer, ed., Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question (1994), 182-201 (ebook)
Michael Galchinsky, ‘Scattered Seeds: A Dialogue of Diaspora’ David Biale, Michael
Galchinsky and Susannah Heschel, eds., Insider/Outsider: American Jews and
Multiculturalism (1998), 185-211
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), selection
Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity,”
Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader (2003),
Jacques Derrida, “Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,” New Literary
History 22 (1991), 39-95 (available through JSTOR)

14. Conclusion (April 18)

Grading Policy

Active participation in class discussions (20%), one class presentation (10%), and one
paper (15-20 pages- 70%).

In addition, you must comply with university policies regarding dishonesty: cheating and
plagiarism.

Course Policies
Make-up exams
N/A

Extra Credit
N/A

Late Work
If you cannot turn in your paper by April 18, 2007, you will receive an X (incomplete),
and will not receive your grade until the beginning of the Spring semester.

Special Assignments
N/A

Class Attendance
Regular class attendance and participation in class discussions comprise 20% of the final
grade. Missing more than 3 classes will affect your grade.

Missing more than 3 classes will affect your grade.

Classroom Citizenship

See above.

Field Trip Policies / Off-Campus Instruction and Course Activities

N/A

Student Conduct & Discipline

The University of Texas System and The University of Texas at Dallas have rules and
regulations for the orderly and efficient conduct of their business. It is the responsibility
of each student and each student organization to be knowledgeable about the rules and
regulations which govern student conduct and activities. General information on student
conduct and discipline is contained in the UTD publication, A to Z Guide, which is
provided to all registered students each academic year.

The University of Texas at Dallas administers student discipline within the procedures of
recognized and established due process. Procedures are defined and described in the
Rules and Regulations, Board of Regents, The University of Texas System, Part 1,
Chapter VI, Section 3, and in Title V, Rules on Student Services and Activities of the
university’s Handbook of Operating Procedures. Copies of these rules and regulations
are available to students in the Office of the Dean of Students, where staff members are
available to assist students in interpreting the rules and regulations (SU 1.602, 972/883-
6391).

A student at the university neither loses the rights nor escapes the responsibilities of
citizenship. He or she is expected to obey federal, state, and local laws as well as the
Regents’ Rules, university regulations, and administrative rules. Students are subject to
discipline for violating the standards of conduct whether such conduct takes place on or
off campus, or whether civil or criminal penalties are also imposed for such conduct.

Academic Integrity

The faculty expects from its students a high level of responsibility and academic honesty.
Because the value of an academic degree depends upon the absolute integrity of the work
done by the student for that degree, it is imperative that a student demonstrate a high
standard of individual honor in his or her scholastic work.

Scholastic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to, statements, acts or omissions related
to applications for enrollment or the award of a degree, and/or the submission as one’s
own work or material that is not one’s own. As a general rule, scholastic dishonesty
involves one of the following acts: cheating, plagiarism, collusion and/or falsifying
academic records. Students suspected of academic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary
proceedings.

Plagiarism, especially from the web, from portions of papers for other classes, and from
any other source is unacceptable and will be dealt with under the university’s policy on
plagiarism (see general catalog for details). This course will use the resources of
turnitin.com, which searches the web for possible plagiarism and is over 90% effective.

Email Use

The University of Texas at Dallas recognizes the value and efficiency of communication
between faculty/staff and students through electronic mail. At the same time, email raises
some issues concerning security and the identity of each individual in an email exchange.
The university encourages all official student email correspondence be sent only to a
student’s U.T. Dallas email address and that faculty and staff consider email from
students official only if it originates from a UTD student account. This allows the
university to maintain a high degree of confidence in the identity of all individual
corresponding and the security of the transmitted information. UTD furnishes each
student with a free email account that is to be used in all communication with university
personnel. The Department of Information Resources at U.T. Dallas provides a method
for students to have their U.T. Dallas mail forwarded to other accounts.

Withdrawal from Class

The administration of this institution has set deadlines for withdrawal of any college-level
courses. These dates and times are published in that semester's course catalog.
Administration procedures must be followed. It is the student's responsibility to handle
withdrawal requirements from any class. In other words, I cannot drop or withdraw any
student. You must do the proper paperwork to ensure that you will not receive a final
grade of "F" in a course if you choose not to attend the class once you are enrolled.

Student Grievance Procedures

Procedures for student grievances are found in Title V, Rules on Student Services and
Activities, of the university’s Handbook of Operating Procedures.

In attempting to resolve any student grievance regarding grades, evaluations, or other

fulfillments of academic responsibility, it is the obligation of the student first to make a
serious effort to resolve the matter with the instructor, supervisor, administrator, or
committee with whom the grievance originates (hereafter called “the respondent”).
Individual faculty members retain primary responsibility for assigning grades and
evaluations. If the matter cannot be resolved at that level, the grievance must be
submitted in writing to the respondent with a copy of the respondent’s School Dean. If
the matter is not resolved by the written response provided by the respondent, the student
may submit a written appeal to the School Dean. If the grievance is not resolved by the
School Dean’s decision, the student may make a written appeal to the Dean of Graduate
or Undergraduate Education, and the deal will appoint and convene an Academic
Appeals Panel. The decision of the Academic Appeals Panel is final. The results of the
academic appeals process will be distributed to all involved parties.

Copies of these rules and regulations are available to students in the Office of the Dean of
Students, where staff members are available to assist students in interpreting the rules and
regulations.

Incomplete Grade Policy

As per university policy, incomplete grades will be granted only for work unavoidably
missed at the semester’s end and only if 70% of the course work has been completed. An
incomplete grade must be resolved within eight (8) weeks from the first day of the
subsequent long semester. If the required work to complete the course and to remove the
incomplete grade is not submitted by the specified deadline, the incomplete grade is
changed automatically to a grade of F.

Disability Services
The goal of Disability Services is to provide students with disabilities educational
opportunities equal to those of their non-disabled peers. Disability Services is located in
room 1.610 in the Student Union. Office hours are Monday and Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to
6:30 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; and Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30
p.m.

The contact information for the Office of Disability Services is:

The University of Texas at Dallas, SU 22
PO Box 830688
Richardson, Texas 75083-0688
(972) 883-2098 (voice or TTY)

Essentially, the law requires that colleges and universities make those reasonable
adjustments necessary to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability. For example,
it may be necessary to remove classroom prohibitions against tape recorders or animals
(in the case of dog guides) for students who are blind. Occasionally an assignment
requirement may be substituted (for example, a research paper versus an oral presentation
for a student who is hearing impaired). Classes enrolled students with mobility
impairments may have to be rescheduled in accessible facilities. The college or
university may need to provide special services such as registration, note-taking, or
mobility assistance.

It is the student’s responsibility to notify his or her professors of the need for such an
accommodation. Disability Services provides students with letters to present to faculty
members to verify that the student has a disability and needs accommodations.
Individuals requiring special accommodation should contact the professor after class or
during office hours.
Religious Holy Days
The University of Texas at Dallas will excuse a student from class or other required
activities for the travel to and observance of a religious holy day for a religion whose
places of worship are exempt from property tax under Section 11.20, Tax Code, Texas
Code Annotated.

The student is encouraged to notify the instructor or activity sponsor as soon as possible
regarding the absence, preferably in advance of the assignment. The student, so excused,
will be allowed to take the exam or complete the assignment within a reasonable time
after the absence: a period equal to the length of the absence, up to a maximum of one
week. A student who notifies the instructor and completes any missed exam or
assignment may not be penalized for the absence. A student who fails to complete the
exam or assignment within the prescribed period may receive a failing grade for that
exam or assignment.

If a student or an instructor disagrees about the nature of the absence [i.e., for the purpose
of observing a religious holy day] or if there is similar disagreement about whether the
student has been given a reasonable time to complete any missed assignments or
examinations, either the student or the instructor may request a ruling from the chief
executive officer of the institution, or his or her designee. The chief executive officer or
designee must take into account the legislative intent of TEC 51.911(b), and the student
and instructor will abide by the decision of the chief executive officer or designee.

Off-Campus Instruction and Course Activities

Off-campus, out-of-state, and foreign instruction and activities are subject to state law
and University policies and procedures regarding travel and risk-related activities.
Information regarding these rules and regulations may be found at the website address
given below. Additional information is available from the office of the school dean.
(http://www.utdallas.edu/Business Affairs/Travel_Risk_Activities.htm)

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the
Professor.