S-Culture-Gender-Media: Jews and Jewishness in Contemporary Britain
Sabine Schülting
Kommentar
The course will focus on the representations, constructions, and negotiations of Jewishness in late 20th and early 21st-century British literature, film, and culture. This will include the various responses to both the long tradition of anti-Jewish hatred and the recent rise in anti-Semitism. We will read texts by British Jewish and non-Jewish writers that address topics such as Holocaust remembrance, religion and sexuality, the conflicts in a multi-ethnic society, the tensions between the individual and the community, as well as between orthodoxy and secularism. In addition, we will discuss contemporary rewritings, screen and stage adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and explore how they re-imagine the character of Shylock, Shakespeare’s Jewish moneylender.
Texts: Students should purchase and read Naomi Alderman’s Disobedience (2006) and Howard Jacobson’s Shylock Is My Name (2016). Both novels are available in paperback editions and can be ordered at local bookshops. Shorter texts will be available on Blackboard. Participants are expected to be familiar with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Assessment will be on the basis of regular attendance, active participation in class activities (such as response papers, short presentations, group work) and the submission of an essay (c. 4000 words).
Schließen
13 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung