3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

This course will use the concept of the Other to study the ways in which various marginal groups in Israel are represented in contemporary Israeli films, TV drama, prose-fiction, poetry and visual art. As a nation-state which was founded on the premise of a utopian vision of a just and fair society and as a promise for a safe haven for Jews escaping their status as Others, contemporary Israeli culture offers a unique case study. The course will run as a research seminar in which students will be encouraged to actively engage in analyzing the ways in which cultural productions depict the Other/s and Otherness as well as the social, political and psychological motivations and implications of these depictions. We will ask questions such as: who is considered as Other and by whom? What roles do the cultural representations play in shaping national collective identity, stereotypes and the perception of the self as Other? And how collective memory shapes Otherness?