Movies, Media, and the Jewish American Experience

Catalog description

Study of Jewish American Film and Popular Culture. COMM (J ST) 434 Movies, Media, and the Jewish American Experience (3) The course examines film and other popular media, including theater, radio, and television, as important sources for understanding the Jewish experience and its impact on and relationship with American culture more generally since the late 19th century. Topics to be considered include US film and popular media as representations of Jewish history, culture, and experience; the role of Jews as prominent directors, producers, actors, and writers in their social-historical context; and the history and function of the representational modes and techniques used in these texts. A major emphasis of the course will be on analyzing film and other media texts as lenses to reflect, refract, and focus on Jewish American identity. By way of analyzing the interrelationships between filmic and other media texts and Jewish American experience, the course will attend to a number of key themes in Jewish cultural history, including Jewish life in late 19th-early 20th century Europe; immigrant life in turn of the century America and questions such as assimilation, preservation of tradition, family life, social mobility, and male/female relations; Jews in show business, organized crime, and sports; American Jews and the Holocaust; American Jews and Israel; Jews in the modern age; generational and denominational differences among Jews; and Jews and anti-Semitism.