Department of Religious Studies

This course traverses the uneven terrain around texts and the experience of trauma. Both the key terms – “text” and “trauma” – of this study are and will remain unfixed, as will the primary units of our inquiry: loss, representation, recollection. Even so, we will attempt precise, provisional maps of these concepts and the consequential, unsteady relationships among them. This is a Jewish Studies course and, as such, our inquiry will often (though not exclusively) pursue texts and topics stemming from various worlds and expressions of Judaism, ancient and modern. This course will neither assume (nor produce) expertise in any one of our specific topics or contexts. Rather our reading and conversation will attempt to add acuity and heft to students' own research questions in the arena of rupture and representation.