Forschungsstelle Judentum

Seminar Language: English. Students may speak German. Most readings are also available in German. 

The Habsburg Empire, once considered the epitome of political obsolescence in the age of nationalism, is nowadays regarded as the hotbed of modern political, legal, economic, and artistic innovation. Reading some of the classics of the field together with recent revisionist works, the seminar will underscore the new place the Habsburg Empire in global history.

The Jewish Diaspora was famously a bulwark of the Habsburg Empire, and a source of the cultural creativity of Viennese modernism. The Jews’ precarious flourishing highlighted both the virtues of imperial pluralism and its fissures. The seminar will use the Jews, the imperial people par-excellence, to illuminate the grandeur and demise of an empire and a culture that brought together past and future but could not hold them together in an age of antisemitism and ethnic nationalism.

Seminar is open to all graduate students in the field of (Central and Eastern European) History, Political Theory, Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies. While it is no prerequisite for participation to pursue a research projects in the field, those MA and graduate Students who do are encouraged to bring their own projects to bear on the readings. There will be room to discuss them in the context of the readings. Student suggestions for project-related readings are eagerly solicited, and they may substitute for some of the readings presently on the list, so do not hesitate to inform the professor of your interests: mhacohen@duke.edu

 Literature:

Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, New York 1980; Wien: Geist und Gesellschaft im fin de siècle (1982) (selected essays).

Pieter Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History, Boston 2016; Habsburg: Geschichte eines Imperiums: 1740 – 1918 (2017).

Malachi Hacohen, “Kosmopoliten in einer ethnonationalen Zeit?  Juden und Österreicher in der Ersten Republik,” in: Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner (eds.), Das Werden der Ersten Republik. … der Rest ist Österreich.  2 vols. Vienna 2008, I: 281–316.

Malachi Hacohen, “Das Kaiserreich, die Sozialdemokratie und die Juden” [Empire, Socialism and Jews: Writing the Empire Back into Austrian History], in: Info Europa 1 (2014), “1914-2014 – Monarchie als Integrationsmodell?” Wiener Journal Beilage, (March 12, 2014), 12–13.

Thomas Prendergast, “In Defense of Empire: Habsburg Sociology and the European Nation-State, 1870–1914,” Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University (2020) (selections)

 Elana Shapira (ed.), Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism; Design Dialog: Juden, Kultur und Wiener Moderne (2018) (selections)

Janek Wasserman, The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas (2019) (introduction and chapters 1-2)

The Hebrew Bible speaks mostly of men. But it includes also Four Matriarchs (Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel) and four prophets (Miriam, Deborah, Hulda, and Noadia). Women in the Bible take important roles in challenging and shaping the norms and laws of their society (Tamar, The Daughters of Zelophehad); they are heroines who save lives (Yael, Esther) and at other times victims of a patriarchic society (Dina, Amnon and Tamar, Yiftach's daughter). They are childless or give birth, pray, immigrate, suffer hunger, or enjoy the privileges of monarchy. They are pious or commit idolatry, they demand justice or commit plots. This seminar will explore Female power in face of their Gender and social disadvantages. What can we learn today from the biblical women? How do modern feminists view the women in the Bible? How do women act in the face of power, under a patriarchic order, which disadvantages them? And can we learn something from these revolutionary women today? 
This seminar offers an overview of contemporary Jewish feminist thought and its discontents in Jewish tradition. Beginning with early examples of Jewish feminism in the Bible, the course will engage with the experience of women and with feminist philosophy and theology in present literature.