AP/JWST 4828 3.00

Complex Relationships in the Contemporary Culture of Israel

This course examines a collage of complex relationships and emergent cultural identities in Israel. Readings relate to Israel’s roots, cultural milieu, contemporary and classical literary canon. Readings, film subtitles, and analysis are in English, peppered with selected translations of Hebrew terminology.

Among the relationships considered are:

• relationships with individuals: love, poets and prophets;
• relationships with self: [re-]examining identity, in search of identity;
• relationships with Israel: coming of age;
• relationships with ‘the other’: Israel’s internal and external neighbours;
• relationships with Holocaust survivors: contemporary retrospect;
• relationships with classical texts: contemporary ‘takes’ on biblical narratives and contemporary prayer-poems and songs of dissent.