Did someone mention teaching? It seems like ages since I’ve been inside an undergraduate classroom. Yet here we go again, and although my first class is still a couple of weeks away, I am already growing anxious and excited.
This will be the fourth time that I’ve taught “Great Jewish Books” (see here, here, and here for the other times). I’ve tweaked the assignments and tried to better represent women in the readings. I had abandoned teaching Gluckl of Hameln (not such a great book!), but after reading Natalie Zemon Davis’s brilliant treatment of it in her book Women on the Margins, I decided to restore it. I also tweaked the assignments again and intend (although it is not reflected explicitly in the syllabus) to more closely tie the weekly journal prompts to parts of Elements of Style (e.g., write this assignment using only the active voice) and provide more scaffolding for their peer reviews.
Now, on to figuring out whether we can meet outside on a regular basis so that we can take our masks off….
The syllabus, in pdf form, is here.