Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis This subject traces the history of the Jews and of Jewish culture in the modern period, from the eighteenth century to the present time. The significant role of Jews in Western modernisation, and the impact of modernity on Judaism and Jewish culture, will provide the overall focus. Topics dealt with include the premodern background and various ways Jews responded to `emancipation' in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, especially in German-speaking lands and eastern Europe; the rise of the major religious movements in Judaism and the extraordinary cultural creativy of European Jewry; the emergence of political antisemitism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Jewish responses such as Zionism, and the catastrophe of the Holocaust. The last part of the subject will focus on the post-World War II period: the rise of Israel, the situation for American and Soviet Jewry, and the Australian Jewish community.
Assessment Class paper (1000 words): 15% + Long essay (3000 words): 40% + Examination (2 hours): 40% + Tutorial participation: 5%