JWST 371 - In Babel: Translation and Global Jewish Cultures

FC ARHU CD WADV

4 credits
This seminar explores how Jewish life was shaped by cross-cultural contact and exchange with non-Jews and other Jewish communities by studying the translation, adaptation, and circulation of texts and ideas. With a wide variety of texts - fiction, poetry, historiography, and literary criticism - from different languages and cultural contexts, we will consider what is at stake in translating Jewishness and how the cultural and linguistic borders of Jewish communities were crossed and discussed in different historical contexts. Students will compare translations and cinematic adaptations of Jewish texts, ancient to modern, and analyze works that foreground the act of translation.

This course is cross-listed with CMPL-371