JST 207 - Jewish Women’s History

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU.
This course explores Jewish women’s history and constructions of gender in Jewish societies from antiquity to the modern era. It considers gender and power relations in the family and society and in organized religion; it examines women’s economic and communal functions, literacy, feminism; the construction and expression of “maleness” in traditional and modernizing Jewish societies. It uses a variety of sources to explore how gender shaped the expectations and experiences of Jewish men and women, and considers how historians have integrated gender into their analyses. It asks how “Jewish history” can be conceptualized differently when women’s experience is foregrounded in our studies.