Anthropology 190
American Jewish Culture
M/W 8-9:20am
106B1 Engineering Hall
Instructor: Matti Bunzl
Office: 386B Davenport Hall
Tel.: 265-4068
e-mail: bunzl@uiuc.edu
Office Hours: M 1-3 and by appointment
TA: Jennifer Young
309B Davenport Hall
jeyoung2@uiuc.edu
TBA
Course Description:
This course will examine American Jewish experience in its cultural and historical diversity. In
doing so, the course will introduce the approaches of cultural anthropology in order to investigate
how an ethnic group has elaborated and continues to elaborate its identity in American culture
and society through strategies of individual and collective behavior. In this framework, American
Jewish identities will emerge as the products of specific interactions between Judaism’s
overarching cultural system and local American cultural formations. To understand these
processes, we will initially examine American synagogue culture, emphasizing the ongoing
rearticulations of religious and cultural existence. This focus on religious and communal life will
be followed by an investigation of Jewish immigration, patterns of acculturation, and forms of
antisemitism, paying particular attention to the questions of race and gender in the constituion of
American Jewish culture. In the final part of the course, we will turn to discussions of Israel and
the Holocaust as seminal coordinates in the ongoing articulation of American Jewish identities.
Required Books (available for purchase at the campus bookstore and on reserve at the
undergraduate library):
- Bloom, Stephen. Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (New York: Harcourt,
2000).
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- Kugelmass, Jack. The Miracle of Intervale Avenue: The Story of a Jewish Congregation in the
South Bronx, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
- Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
- Prell, Riv-Ellen. Fighting to Become Americans: Jews, Gender, and the Anxiety of Assimilation
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1999).
- Shokeid, Moshe. A Gay Synagogue in New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2003)
Required Articles are on electronic reserve at http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/ -- click
“Electronic Reserves Course List” and then “ANTH 190”:
- Behar, Ruth. “The Story of Ruth, the Anthropologist.” In Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky & Shelley
Fisher Fishkin, eds. People of the Book: Thirty Scholars Reflect on their Jewish
Identity (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996):261-279.
- Boyarin, Jonathan. “Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eighth Street Shul.” In
Jack Kugelmass, ed. Between Two Worlds: Ethnographic Essays on American Jewry
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988):52-76.
- Karp, Abraham. “Overview: The Synagogue in America -- A Historical Typology.” In Jack
Wertheimer, ed. The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (Hanover:
Brandeis University Press, 1987):1-36.
- Myerhoff, Barbara. “Bobbes and Zeydes: Old and New Roles for Elderly Jews.” In Myerhoff,
Remembered Lives: The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1992):191-218.
- Rogin, Michael. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996):73-120.
- Sacks, Karen Brodkin. “How Did Jews Become White Folks?” In Steven Gregory & Roger
Sanjek, eds., Race (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996):78-102.
Exams and Grade Components:
- Class Attendance and Participation (15%)
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- Reading Notes (25%)
- Two Take-Home Quizzes (30%)
- Ethnographic Project (30%)
Short reading notes on the assigned texts will be due at the beginning of each class. The reading
notes are meant to help you prepare for class by allowing you to reflect on the texts under
discussion. Reading notes (which should not exceed one page) are graded as +, , or - .
The take-home quizzes will present you with identifications and a choice of short essay
questions. You will have one week to respond to the questions. Your combined answers to the
essay questions should not exceed 4 pages.
An ethnographic project on an aspect of American Jewish culture will be due in the final week of
class. Methodologies, formats, and possible topics will be discussed in class. Students will have
the option of working in small groups (up to 3). Presentations of projects will be scheduled for
the final two weeks of class and will receive extra credit.
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Course Outline
Texts with an asterisk (*) are on electronic reserve
Week 1
27 August
Introduction -- Overview of the Class
Week 2
1 September No Class (Labor Day)
3 September Anthropology -- How does it work? Fieldwork -- Why do we do it?
Reading: Ruth Behar, “The Story of Ruth, the Anthropologist.”*
Jonathan Boyarin, “Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the
Eighth Street Shul.”*
Week 3
8 September The American Synagogue
Reading: Abraham Karp, “Overview: The Synagogue in America.”*
10 September Jewish Ethnography in a New York City Bakery
Reading: Jack Kugelmass, The Miracle on Intervale Avenue, chs. 1-3.
Week 4
15 September Sites of Prayer
Reading: Jack Kugelmass, The Miracle on Intervale Avenue, chs. 4-6.
17 September Myths, Lives & Miracles
SCREENING OF FILM “THE MIRACLE OF INTERVALE AVENUE”
Reading: Jack Kugelmass, The Miracle on Intervale Avenue, chs. 7-9 & Epilogue.
Week 5
22 September Religious Life in a Modern Age -- New York’s Gay Synagogue
Reading: Moshe Shokeid, A Gay Synagogue in New York, chs. 1 & 2.
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24 September What to do when You are Gay and Jewish?
Reading: Moshe Shokeid, A Gay Synagogue in New York, chs. 4 & 5.
Week 6
29 September Life at a Gay Synagogue
Reading: Moshe Shokeid, A Gay Synagogue in New York, chs. 6, 9 & Epilogue.
Questions for First Quiz Handed Out
1 October
Ultra-Orthodoxy in the Heartland
Reading: Stephen Bloom, Postville, part I.
Week 7
6 October
No Class (Yom Kippur)
8 October
Hasidim on Camera
SCREENING OF FILM “POSTVILLE”
Reading: Stephen Bloom, Postville, part II.
First Quiz Due at the Beginning of Class
Week 8
13 October
Race and the Representation of Jewish Assimilation
SCREENING OF FILM “THE JAZZ SINGER”
Reading: Michael Rogan, Blackface, White Noise*
15 October
How the Jews became While Folk
Reading: Karen Brodkin Sacks, “How Did Jews Become White Folks?”*
Week 9
20 October
Thinking about American Jewish Genders
SCREENING OF FILM “NUMBER OUR DAYS”
Reading: Barbara Myerhoff, “Bobbes and Zeydes.”*
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22 October
Fighting to Become Americans: Gender as a Site of Acculturation
Reading: Riv-Ellen Prell, Fighting to Become Americans, Intro. & ch. 1.
Week 10
27 October
Jewish Men and Women in the Twentieth Century
SCREENING OF FILM “ANNIE HALL”
Reading: Riv-Ellen Prell, Fighting to Become Americans, chs. 3 & 5.
29 October
The “Jewish American Princess” and her Counter-Representations
Reading: Riv-Ellen Prell, Fighting to Become Americans, ch. 6.
Week 11
3 November
Israel in the American-Jewish Imagination
SCREENING OF FILM “EXODUS” (PARTS)
Reading: Media and Web Resources on Israel and the Arab/Israeli Conflict
5 November
Birthrights
Reading: http://www.birthrightisrael.com/
Week 12
10 November The Holocaust as a History of Representation
Reading: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, part 1.
12 November Anne Frank and the Universalization of the Holocaust
SCREENING OF FILM “THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK” (PARTS)
Reading: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, part 2.
Week 13
17 November The Particularization of the Holocaust
Reading: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, part 3.
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19 November The Holocaust Today
SCREENING OF FILM “ANNE FRANK” (PARTS)
Reading: Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, parts 4 & 5.
Questions for Second Quiz Handed Out
Week 14
1 December
Presentation of Ethnographic Projects
3 December
Presentation of Ethnographic Projects
Second Quiz Due at the Beginning of Class
Week 15
8 December
Presentation of Ethnographic Projects
10 December Presentation of Ethnographic Projects
Ethnographic Projects Due at the Beginning of Class
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