3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Until five decades ago, many Tamazghan (Maghrebi) and Middle Eastern cities and villages teemed with Jewish populations. However, the long historical process that was started in France with creation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle’s schools (1830s) and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 in the midst of decolonization in Tamazgha and the Middle East led to the departure of tens of thousands of Amazigh and Arab Jews from their homelands. This emigration took these Jews to France, Israel, Canada, the United States, and different Latin American countries, leaving their Muslim co-citizens behind. After a long silence, the last thirty years have noticed the emergence of a very rich body of literary and cinematographic works that revisit the history of Jewish-Muslim relations before Jewish emigration. Reading against both nostalgia and conflict, which have deeply marked the study of Jewish-Muslim relations, this course will examine these works from the perspective of loss and trauma. Understanding how the remembrance of Jews by Muslims is mired in unresolved trauma and loss will help critically examine the process that took Jews away from their homelands as well as the currently state of Jewish memory in societies that they once called home. Students enrolled in the course will read a variety of materials, both primary and secondary sources, and watch several films that will help them gain a better understanding of stakes of the ways Muslims remember Jews.