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An in-class midterm will be administered on Friday, February 6, based on the historical information covered in the first half of the quarter. For more information and study guides for the midterm, click here.
You will be responsible for writing three response papers in the course of this quarter (note the due dates below in the course schedule). The three papers will be based on your analytical and scholarly responses to the following:
Each response paper should be 3 pages , typed, double-spaced. Please use a reasonably sized font, such as Times New Roman, 12-pt.; margins should be no larger than 1.25" all around. Do not play spacing games with fonts or margins. Really. The specific assignment for each response paper varies (click the link below for specific assignment guidelines), but each paper should do the following:
Do not use any outside resources (books, articles, websites) for your response papers: your response should be based entirely on your own informed, scholarly interaction with the material at hand. It goes without saying that the use of any outside resources without attribution constitutes plagiarism, and will result in a 0 for the assignment and potential disciplinary action from the University. The best way to avoid such a catastrophe is to follow the parameters of this assignment: limit your resources to your own brain, and any information learned in class. If you do decide to cite information from the course (textbook, readings, class lectures) you may do so, with proper attribution in parentheses or in a footnote. Click here for more information on the response papers...
By the day of the final exam (Monday, March 15), you will complete a final project in which you describe and analyze a website related to some aspect of Jewish identity . The goal of this project is to explore how Jewish identities are constructed and broadcast in the twenty-first century, and how these identities might relate to other contemporary or historical versions of Jewishness that we have examined in class. You must choose a website to evaluate by the beginning of week 8. The written report on your final project should be eight-ten (8-10) pages long: this does not include any graphics, images, or other nontextual materials you may decide to append to your report (do not print out ten pages from a website, staple them together, and turn them in). Use a reasonably sized font (such as Times New Roman, 12-pt.) and keep your margins at no more than 1.25" all around. No spacing games, please. More specific information for the final research project can be found be clicking the link below, but in general you should choose a website concerned with some formation of Jewish group identity and evaluate how this group "broadcasts" its Jewish identity to others. (Note that I want you to find a website that represents some group: I do not want you to evaluate individuals' webpages.) In these 8-10 pages you should try to answer the following questions:
You should also engage with the web aesthetics of this page: is it professional? Amateurish? Functional? Confusing? How does the internet affect religious representation? You may use outside resources for this project (there will be some books on reserve relating to religion and the internet; you may also find books or articles in the library), but your main goal should be to engage with this specific representation of Jewish identity, and analyze it using the tools of the academic study of religion gained in this course. Click here for more information on the final project...
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