NES 2167

Israeli Masculinity

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

Representations of masculinity play important roles in modern Hebrew texts. Through introduction to scholarship on gender and sexuality, students learn to critically analyze Hebrew texts featuring such representations and to synthesize how diverse textual representations of masculinity reflect and seek to influence the changing ways that Jewish and Israeli identities are conceived and performed. The course's tripartite structure aids student perception of masculine representations' diachronic development. In the first section, students analyze traditional depictions of Jewish masculinity and observe how Zionism's emergence brought about Jewish masculinity's reconceptualization; in the second section, students dissect diverse texts depicting and participating in efforts to redefine Jewish masculinity in Palestine; in the third section,  students probe texts written and produced after 1948 that challenge the form of masculine identity dominant at the Israeli state's inception and push for greater diversity in how masculinity and femininity, heterosexuality and homosexuality, are conceived and performed.

When Offered Spring.

Breadth Requirement (GB)
Distribution Category (CA-AS, ALC-AS)
Course Attribute (CU-ITL)

Comments Taught in English.

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