Professor Jeffrey Shoulson, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at UConn, talked over lunch Wednesday afternoon with an attentive handful of honors students about several aspects of contemporary Jewish life, both in general and at UConn. Shoulson, a professor in the department of Literatures, Cultures and Languages as well as the department of English, came to UConn two-and-a-half years ago from the University of Miami, and saw an “opportunity to do something new and build on some new momentum” with the Judaic Studies program.

With an endowment from developer Simon Konover and an investment from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Judaic Studies program began to grow as new faculty were hired. The program currently offers a minor in Judaic Studies and is in the process of having a major approved, as faculty members with different specialties continue to devise courses.

Shoulson praised the strength among his colleagues’ expertise with different time periods, pointing out his own specialty in the influence of Judaism and rabbinic literature on 17th-century English culture. He emphasized the fascination that different religions have long had with each other, stating that it is impossible to consider any religion in isolation.

“Judaism is what it is because…it developed within a large array of religious and cultural traditions,” Shoulson said. “They don’t exist in vacuums.” In response to students’ questions, Shoulson spent several minutes connecting contemporary issues faced by the American Jewish community to issues facing the State of Israel. “Nothing is simple when it comes to Israel,” Shoulson said.

By: Molly Miller, Staff Writer at UConn Daily Campus

In his preliminary research on the Jerusalem Light Rail, presented at UConn on Wednesday, Director of Middle East Studies Jeremy Pressman argued that whether Palestinians are choosing to ride the Israeli-run transit system or throw rocks at it, all are engaged in opposing geopolitical realities of living in Israel.Development on the Light Rail, which opened in 2011, began in November of 2000 when a Palestinian uprising was underway, making many investors reluctant to become involved in the project.

 

 

Congratulations and Mazel Tov to our colleague Fred Roden, Associate Professor of English, who has been recognized by the College of Liberal Arts an Sciences as a recipient of its Excellence in Teaching Award this year. We’re kvelling for you, Fred!

Our Guest Speaker, Paola Tartakoff, who will be presenting a Public Lecture and Research Seminar next week, was featured in the Jewish ledger this week.  “In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next 20 months.”  This is the setting of Paola Tartakoff’s book,Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Pennsylvania Press, Middle Ages Series, 2012), which lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain.  …  (excerpt from article – read full article here.)

1/16/2014: Mazel Tov to Joan Seliger Sidney, whose latest collection of poetry, Bereft and Blessed, will be published some time in the coming year by Antrim Press. JOAN SELIGER SIDNEY is writer-in-residence at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life. She also facilitates “Writing for Your Life,” an adult writing workshop. Her dream-came-true job was teaching creative writing at the Université de Grenoble, France.

By Christine Buckley – November 6, 2013

Jeffrey Shoulson, who is director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and Professor of English, was invested as the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies. The Konover Chair takes its name from the two founding supporters of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Life at UConn, Doris and Simon Konover, and supports teaching and research by a leading scholar of Jewish life, history, and religion. Shoulson’s scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in the medieval and early modern periods, especially the ways in which Jews and Judaism are represented within Christian writings and Christianity influences Jewish writings.

 

 

A Novel Group of Huskies – THE UCONN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION’S GLOBAL BOOK CLUB Judaic Studies Professor leads Webinar 7/27/13. The Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies, Jeffrey Shoulson, will be chatting with our book club over webinar about June’s book, The Storyteller.   An article published on UCONN Today was shared, which talks about Professor Shoulson’s research on the role of Jews in England’s reformation.