Iconoclastic Fictions: Imagination and Idolatry in Recent Jewish American Writing
HEST 225
Spring 2007 not offered
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This course will explore the connection, in self-consciously Jewish contemporary fiction, between the Judaic ban on idolatry and the intersections of ethics, power, and representation. The texts we will read pursue such an exploration in relation to questions of art and ethics, rationalism and faith, mimesis and technological reproduction, celebrity and identity, myth-making and cybernetic capabilities, among others. They all connect the Judaic critique of "idolatry" to the varied Jewish responses to fundamental issues of contemporary Jewish existence, such as the Holocaust, Zionism, and assimilation. They all thereby suggest that "Jewishness," rather than simply an ethnic identity, might provide ways of reading the dominant Enlightenment discourses, and of enhancing some of those discourses' liberating possibilities. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Ethical Reasoning, Writing |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA RELI |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
Major Readings:
Dara Horn, IN THE IMAGE
Ronald Sukenick, MOSAIC MAN
Cynthia Ozick, THE PUTTERMESSER PAPERS
Philip Roth, OPERATION SHYLOCK
Art Spiegelman, MAUS I AND II
Lionel Kochan, BEYOND THE GRAVEN IMAGE
Selected theoretical and critical essays on idolatry.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Five or six short response papers, final take home exam. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
This course does not count towards the Religion major. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
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