HEBR 1260 Topics in Hebrew Literature in Hebrew

This course offers a broad survey of Hebrew literature from its biblical roots through the contemporary period, tracing the extraordinary journey of a language and its literature across more than three millennia. Students will engage with poetry, prose, and drama drawn from the medieval Andalusian tradition, the nineteenth-century Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), the Zionist literary renaissance, the generation of Israeli statehood, and the vibrant, multicultural landscape of Hebrew writing today. All primary texts are read in the original Hebrew; secondary critical materials are available in both Hebrew and English. The course foregrounds questions of language, memory, identity, and place, examining how Hebrew writers have wrestled with exile and return, tradition and modernity, collective experience and individual voice. No single ideological or aesthetic framework governs our reading; instead, the course cultivates the skill of close literary analysis alongside an awareness of the historical forces that shaped each text. Taught in Hebrew, with primary source readings and discussion in Hebrew, this course is suitable for advanced undergraduate students who have placed into Ivrit b-Ivrit or have completed HEBR 1030. Prerequisite(s): HEBR 1030 or by placement via the Hebrew Placement Exam.

Credits

2