Fall 2021 Courses
Law and Social Change: The Case of Israel
Legal Studies 190
Prof. Masua Sagiv, Bar-Ilan University; Shalom Hartman Institute
This course will examine the scope and limits of promoting social change through law in the cultural, religious, and communal spheres in Israel where the “status quo” dominates: conflicts of state and religion in Israel. Issues to be covered include religion-induced segregations, religious marriage and divorce, Jewish dietary laws, gender equality and religion, conversion, and free exercise of religion in different sites (such as the Western Wall and the Temple Mount). While the question of law and social change arise in any contemporary democracy, the Israeli experience provides unique perspectives and illustrations which will be explored critically throughout the course.
Human and Civil Rights in Israel
Legal Studies 190
Prof. Michal Tamir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Bar-Ilan University
Does Israel have a bill of rights? Are human rights in Israel applicable in relations between citizens? What are the best tools to deal with women’s exclusion from the public sphere? In this course, we will address these questions along with the development and status of human rights in Israel. We will examine the Supreme Court’s role in the development of rights through the interpretation of laws, and explore the establishment of “Basic Laws”, which were interpreted by the Supreme Court as arising from human dignity. Special attention will be given to human dignity, freedom of expression, and equality.
Mental Health in Conflict Zones: The Politics of Trauma on the Border of Israel and Gaza
Anthropology 196
Prof. Keren Friedman-Peleg, College of Management – Academic Studies
What happens when trauma is increasingly experienced, as well as promoted and embraced, as the defining characteristic of the daily life of a country? When a specific mental disorder – PTSD in this case – becomes a national identity marker that both expresses and exposes core dilemmas and contested values within the country? Relying upon contemporary ethnographic research from “behind the scenes” of Israeli mental health clinics located near the border with Gaza, the course addresses these questions with two main goals: 1) To explore the effects of the diagnostic categories of trauma and PTSD on the discourse of violence and social suffering in conflict and post-conflict areas; 2) To examine through the lens of key theories in anthropology, wide-ranging experiences of vulnerability, national identity, and gender and socio-economic inequality as expressed in interactions between psychiatrists and psychologists and their clients, including Israeli soldiers, members of secular, religious, and Ultra-orthodox Jewish communities, and members of Arab-Bedouin communities living near the border of Israel and Gaza.
Philosophical Foundations of Education
Education 184
Prof. Hanan Alexander, University of Haifa
This course will examine a systematic survey of educational thought with emphasis on the epistemological, logical and ethical foundations of the major philosophies of education.
Modern Hebrew and Literature and Culture
MELC
Prof. Uri Mor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
A close reading of selected works of modern Hebrew fiction, poetry, and drama in their cultural and historical contexts. Topics vary from year to year and include literature and politics, eros and gender, memory and nationalism, Middle-Eastern and European aspects of Israeli literature and culture.
Israel: Society and Politics
Political Science 191
Prof. Ron Hassner, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, UC Berkeley
The seminars will generally be led by ladder-rank faculty members in the subfields of Political Theory, Area Studies, American Politics, International Relations, and Comparative Politics. These intense writing seminars will focus on the research area of the faculty member teaching the course. The seminars will provide an opportunity for students to have direct intellectual interactions with faculty members while also giving the students an understanding of faculty research.
Graduate Courses
Studies of Trauma and Resilience: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Case Study
Anthropology 250X
Prof. Keren Friedman-Peleg, College of Management – Academic Studies
This seminar points an ethnographic lens on the equation of resilience-against-trauma in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Employing a top-down perspective, we will explore the deployment of resilience as a political tool in Israel’s discursive arsenal aimed at shaping public perception, and resilience as a data-driven category of measurement within a process aimed at mitigating the effects of trauma experienced by particularly vulnerable communities and by the population as a whole. From a bottom-up perspective, we will examine resilience as an ethos – a contestable ideal of human behavior which, as shaped within this particular socio-political and cultural context, has functioned as a catalyst for unique negotiations between diverse social players, among them Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian mental health experts, Palestinian and Israeli community leaders, and the chronically traumatized members of local communities living near the border with Gaza.
Comparative Constitutional Law and Israel
Law 262.5
Prof. Amnon Reichman, University of Haifa
How are fundamental rights — freedom of speech and religion, equality, property, privacy, voting, due process –defined and protected in other constitutional democracies? How are emergencies constitutionally regulated? How are questions of standing, justiciability and remedies handled? And most importantly: what lessons can we learn from the constitutional experience of other jurisdictions? Students will be offered the opportunity to examine and critically evaluate key features of constitutional jurisprudence in selected jurisdictions. Attention will be paid to methodology — how do we compare? — as well as to possible justifications (and limits) of the comparative enterprise. The course will then focus on the practical insights that can be drawn from the different separation-of-powers and rights-protection schemes modern democracies adopt, with an eye to the relationship between courts, markets, technology and politics. Students interested in public law adjudication, globalization and transnational regulation will therefore find the exercise useful.
Spring 2022 Courses
Contemporary Judaism in Israel: State, Religion, and Gender
Jewish Studies 122
Prof. Masua Sagiv, Bar-Ilan University; Shalom Hartman Institute
The course will explore dynamics of change in issues of state, religion and gender in Israel, as manifested in social movement activism through law and society. The course will illustrate and reflect upon different strategies and spheres for promoting social change, by examining core issues involving state, religion, and gender in Israel: religious marriage and divorce, gender equality in the religious establishment, conversion, spiritual leadership of women, and free exercise of religion at the Western Wall (the struggle of Women of the Wall). Spheres of activism to be covered include parliament, state courts, alternative private initiatives and courts, and social media.
Comparative Constitutional Law: The Case of Israel
Legal Studies 174
Prof. Michal Tamir, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Bar-Ilan University
This course will provide an introduction to constitutional law using Israel as a case study. Topics include: Constitutionalism and judicial review, state neutrality and self-determination, minority rights, state and religion, Human Rights Law, the concept of “defensive democracy” and ban of non-democratic political parties, legal aspects of the fight on terror, freedom of expression, equality and anti-discrimination, social rights, and constitutional limitations on privatization.
Comparative Criminal Justice Reform
Legal Studies 190
Prof. Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Bari-Ilan University
Citizenship Education and Social Conflict
Education 150
Prof. Hanan Alexander, University of Haifa
Citizenship education is a topic of growing international concern among educational researchers, policy-analysts, and practitioners. Increased migration, globalization, socio-economic stratification, and the rise of politically and religiously motivated terror, have posed significant challenges to the national-state and to state education as they emerged from nineteenth century European nationalism into today’s diverse democracies. This has led many educational decision-makers to reconsider the role that schooling might play in the cultivation of political identity, from arguments for fostering maximal forms of citizenship that require thick, even patriotic, identification with local or national cultures, languages, histories, and ideals; to advocacy of schooling in minimal sorts of citizenship concerned primarily with individual rights and the mechanics of government; to insistence that citizenship education should challenge accepted hegemonies in order to include those who have been excluded, empower the disenfranchised, and liberate the oppressed. Israel offers an especially interesting case for exploring education for citizenship, since it encompasses many of the complexities confronted by diverse, multi-cultural, conflict-ridden societies. Founded as a republican democracy to guarantee self-determination to the Jewish people, it embraces Arab and other minorities as citizens and is ridden with deep and on-going conflicts between Jews and Arabs and within both the Arab and Jewish communities. This course will explore the complexities of citizenship education from the lens of the Israeli case with reference, where relevant, to the extensive public discourse around similar issues in the American context.
History of Modern Israel
History 100M
Prof. Paula Kabalo, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.
Language, Culture, and Identities in Israel
Jewish Studies 120A
Prof. Uri Mor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
A course on trends in Jewish religious, cultural, and social life. The course will study innovative and conservative aspects of thought, ritual, and belief in relation to contemporary life and traditional Jewish values in at least one country other than the United States.
Intersectional Perspectives on Contemporary Dance in Israel
Theater 125
Prof. Yael Nativ, Academic College for Society and Arts; Levinsky College of Education
This course explores contemporary dance in Israel (2000 and on) from social, political and cultural perspectives. We will examine the ways in which dance in Israel embodies different aesthetics and cultural ideologies and how movement and choreography represent and manifest issues of identity, nationality, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. We will also address the effect of local and global powers on the development of contemporary Israeli dance. Although the course will focus mainly on Israeli current dance and dance makers, we will have a contextualized historical overview looking at genres, styles, key figures and critical moments in Israeli history of dance of the 20th century. New skills will be gained on how to look at dance and critically “read” and analyze it as an art from a cultural-intersectional perspective.
War in the Middle East
Political Science 124B
Prof. Ron Hassner, Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, UC Berkeley
This class begins with a historical overview of war in the region. The second part of the class introduces theories that complement and elaborate on theories from PS124A: arguments about the relationship between war and resources,religion, authoritarianism, civil military relations, territorial disputes, sovereignty, and power. In the third part of the course, we will explore current policy concerns related to conflict in the region: Nuclear proliferation, terrorism, the civil war in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drone warfare, and the U.S. role in the region.
Decal
Grassroots Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Context
Political Science 198
Facilitated by Yali Ben Tov Scharz and Charlie Halstead
The purpose of this course is to offer students a less-studied perspective in peacebuilding – that at the grassroots level. Referred to as Grassroots Peace, People to People Peace, or Track Two Diplomacy, this approach focuses on non-governmental initiatives to forge peace among conflicting parties from the bottom-up. Over the course of the semester, students will gain a deeper understanding of the advantages/challenges to taking a grassroots approach to peacebuilding by studying current initiatives being led by Palestinians and Israelis. After a brief introduction to the conflict and concepts of peacebuilding, the class will be arranged by issue areas that present opportunities for cooperation starting from Economics, to Language, then Religion, and finally Climate Change. The class will be a mix of discussion-heavy lectures and guest lectures led by people working in Grassroots Peace in the region.
Graduate Courses
Pedagogy of Difference
Education 290B
Prof. Hanan Alexander, University of Haifa
Education is often thought to entail the transmission or transformation of worthwhile knowledge across the generations. This requires a conception of what it might mean for something to be worthwhile. Acquiring such a conception involves answering the classical ethical question: “What does it mean to live a good life?” Crucial to any answer to this question is the assumption that human beings possess agency. But how can agency be cultivated without imposing one view or another on people in ways that undermine the very independence agency is supposed to be about? The three most common answers to this question in educational thought are “critical pedagogy,” “critical thinking,” and “educational criticism.” Each answer draws on a different philosophical tradition to use the term “critical” in ways that are distinct from one another, and each one also undermines the very independent agency it claims to advance. This course offers an alternative conception of criticism within which to cultivate the moral independence necessary for values education grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the relational ethics of Martin Buber, Nel Noddings, and Emmanuel Levinas. It is called “pedagogy of difference.” After reviewing the relevant literature, the course will consider four projects in which these ideas were tested in Israel, one dealing with inclusion of marginalized populations in higher education, a second with dialogue between science education and religious education, a third with interdisciplinary middle school teaching and learning in the humanities, and a fourth with the measurement and assessment of values education.