Expressive Culture: Art and Culture in Contemporary Israel

Catalog description

The location of Israel at the geographic junction between the West and the East, between the Arab world and the Western world, against the background of the long historical complexity of this piece of land provides a panoramic view of Israeli culture and art by examining thematic crossroads and ideas, via problems and social conflicts which lie at the heart of those art works and are reflected by them. Themes include: religion and secularism, universalism/globalism versus localism, Jews and Arabs, Ashkenazic and Sephardic cultures, multiculturalism in Israel, Zionism and Post-Zionism, right and left political world views, questions of gender, historical perspectives on war and peace and the Holocaust. Students explore the way different forms of art—visual, literary, and performance—reflect and shape the understanding of the "Israeli mosaic" while learning about the way the artists and writers internalize, consciously and unconsciously the complex Israeli reality.