Approved University Courses
Bard College
Bard College offers a core course Jewishness Beyond Religion: Defining Secular Jewish Culture, as well as two peripheral courses, Current Issues in Israeli Society, Politics and Culture, and Diaspora and Homeland.
Binghamton
Binghamton offers a core course, Secular Jewish Ideologies and Identities, presenting an overview of secular Jewish ideologies and identities in modern times and two courses devoted to more narrowly focused study of secular dimensions of modern Jewish culture.
Boston University
Boston University offers as its core course, The Modern Jew, with The Political Jew and The Heretical Jew as two secondary courses.
Brandeis University
As its core course, Brandeis offers Secular Jews: Lives and Choices from 1750 to the Present, with Secular-isms: Yiddish Culture in the Modern World and World Without God?: Theories of Secularization as the secondary courses.
Brown University
Brown University offers Towards the Future: Secular Messianism and Utopian Hope in 20th Century Jewish Thought as its core course. Previously taught courses include Film and American Jewish Life: A Study in Secular Values and Heidegger and 20th Century Jewish Thought.
Dickinson College
Dickinson offers Jewish Identity in a Secular Age: The Genesis of Cultural Judaism as its core course with several new courses being developed. These include American Jewish Literature, Representations of the Holocaust in American and German Culture, Israeli Politics and Society, Jewish Women Writers of Latin America, and History of Eastern Europe.
Goucher College
Goucher College's core course, to be offered every fall semester, is Judaism, Secularism, Modernity.
Graduate Theological Union
The Graduate Theological Union offers three classes in the Posen Project: an interdisciplinary M.A. level core course in Secular Jewish Thought, a doctoral level course on Haskalah Literature: Secularization and Sexuality and an M.A. level course on Introduction to Jewish Folklore.
Hampshire College
Hampshire College offers three courses. These are the core course The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture, New Jewish Identities in Post-World War II American Culture, and Yiddish Literature and Culture.
Harvard University
Harvard offers a multi-year set of three courses, on the interrelated themes of secularism, secularization, secular languages and identities. The core course will be Theories of Secularization with two secondary courses, Jewish Languages and Literatures in the Secular World and Contesting the Bible: from Sacred to Secular and Back Again.
Hunter College
Hunter College offers the following two courses in the Posen Project: Topics in History: Secular Judaism as the core course and Crises and Responses in Modern Jewish History as the peripheral course.
Lehigh University
Lehigh University offers one core course, East European Jewish Civilization in the Modern Era, 1750s-1939, and the revision of three existing courses.
Miami University (Ohio)
Miami University offers the following Posen Project courses: Secular Jewish Culture from the Enlightenment to Zionism as the core course, with Jewish-American Fiction: 1945 to the Present, Tradition and Identity: Jews and Judaism in the Persian and Greco-Roman Periods 539 BCE-200 CE, and Contemporary Israeli Society: Psychological and Social Challenges as the three peripheral courses.
Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College offers three courses. The core course is Jewish Experience in a Secular Age: A History of Modern Jewish Identity, with two other peripheral courses, American Jewish Life and Culture, and Jewish Nationalism: Conceptions of Jewish Identity in the Age of the Nation-State.
Rice University
Rice University offers a core course, Secularizing Jewry/Judaizing Secularity and two peripheral courses, German-Jewish Literature and Culture and Spinoza and Levinas: Seminar in Secular Jewish Thought.
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
Rutgers offers as its core course, Making Jews Modern: Varieties of Secular Judaism. The other courses are: The Secular Turn: Jewish Thought from Medieval to Modern, Community and Crisis: The Jewish Encounter with the Secular, Modern Jewish Culture: New Practices in a Secular Age, Germans and Jews: An Intercultural History, and Special Topics: The Bible through Literary Eyes.
Temple University
Temple University in Philadelphia offers a two-semester core course on Jewish Civilization: Secular Judaisms from Spinoza to Salami along with two peripheral courses: Secular Approaches to Ancient Jewish History and Jews and Sports.
The New School The New School is deferring its core course, Ethics Without Religion: Secular Jewish Thought from Spinoza to Arendt, until the spring of 2010, and is now offering The Literature of the Jewish-American Experience and The Origins of Secular Society: A Jewish Intellectual History.
Tulane University
Tulane presents Gender and Judaism in the Posen Project. Previous courses offered include the core course, Building Jewish Identity: Secular Judaism in Historical Perspective and Social Sources of Jewish Identity in the Modern World.
University at Albany
The Posen Project courses are the core course, Secular Jewish Identity and Culture, and Jews and the Secular Descendants of Jews in Latin America, Shifting Identities in Modern Jewish Fiction and Hollywood and the Jews: A Secular Analysis of Ethnic Stereotyping in the American Cinema.
University of California - Davis
The three core courses are Introduction to Religious and Secular Jewish Cultures, Secular Jewish Thinkers and The Making of Secular Jewish Culture with peripheral courses studying Jewish Identity and Visual Culture and Modern Yiddish Literature.
University of California, Los Angeles
UCLA offers five courses in the Posen Project. The core course is The Spirit of Secularism: Jewish Cultures in a Secular Age with the other courses: The Jews of Latin America, 1500-2000, Role of Jews in Film and Television, Modern Jewish Religious Thought, and Jewish Civilization: Encounter with Great World Cultures.
University of Denver
The core course for is Jews on the Move: Culture, People and Ideas with Foundations of Jewish Communal Service offered as a graduate course.
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas offers a core course and several supporting courses. The core course is Jewish Culture in a Secular Age: The Modern Jewish Revolution with the following supporting courses, Jewish American Literature and Culture, Jewish American Popular Culture, Jewish Cultural History, Contemporary Jewish Identities, Messiah and Modernity, Jewish Cities, and Classical and Contemporary Jewish Thought.
University of Massachusetts - Amherst
The distinctive role of Jews and Judaism in shaping some of the basic terms of negotiations over relations of Religion and State will be examined in the primary course, Negotiating Religion and State: Jewish Secularism and the Emergence of European Modernity, with peripheral courses tackling World Jewish Cultures and Jews in Muslim Lands.
University of Miami
The process of secularization and justifying Judaism in the modern world are studied here along with a history of secular Jewish nationalism. Three new courses are being offered: Secular Jewish Identity in the Modern World, Judaism and Modernity: Pluralities of Jewish Culture since the Enlightenment and The 'Vanishing' American Jew? The Emergence of Secular Judaism in America.
University of Michigan
With the purpose of providing students with knowledge of the cultural and intellectual history of non-religious Judaism and its currents, achievements, and challenges, Michigan, the first college involved in this program, introduced four new courses in a revised program. The courses are Secular Jewish Thought, Jewish Identities, Israeli Society, and Jews in American Culture.
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto offers a core course, Secularism and Strife: The Cultural History of Modern Jews and peripheral courses entitled The Spinozist Challenge: Secularization in Modern Jewish Thought, Outsiders Inside: Jews and American Popular Culture, Canadian Jewish Culture, and Culture and Society of Modern Israel.
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia offers three courses, one core and two peripheral. The core course is a two semester course, Judaism between Modernity and Secularization: An Introduction to Judaism as a Culture that explores the variety of Jewish responses and adjustments to the modern world and their implications for present day Judaism in its many forms.The peripheral courses are American Jewish Popular Music, Science and Judaism and Klezmer Ensemble.
Additional University Course in the U.S.
Secular Judaism and Secular Jews: Lives and Choices 1789 to 2005
The University of Pennsylvania offers two courses, Secular Judaism and Secular Jews: Lives and Choices and the corresponding continuing adult education version. These courses are not part of the Posen Project but the material is consistent with the project.
Sample syllabus developed by Professor Menahem Brinker:
The Emergence and Content of Secular Jewish Thought
The following sample syllabus was developed by Professor Menahem Brinker, professor of philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University and the University of Chicago, the author of six books on esthetics, philosophy, and literature, and the preeminent ideological founder of the Israeli peace movement. This syllabus is a work in progress and the section on Secularist Jewish Thought Today is yet to be completed.
Programs in Israel:
Tel Aviv University - Faculty of Humanities
Tel Aviv University offers undergraduate students in the Faculty of Humanities a program devoted to Judaism as Culture.
Ofakim, the Study of Judaism as Culture, Tel Aviv University
This is an ambitious program, funded by the Posen Foundation, that prepares teachers in secular Israeli high schools for the study of Judaism as culture. The program selects elite students to study in two major Jewish Studies Departments.
Oranim College Program
Oranim offers four courses, The Emergence of Jewish Secular Thought in Modernity, Jewish Culture as a Secular Paradigm of Jewish Existence in Modernity, Dialogues between Jewish Culture and Neighboring Societies - A Secular Perspective, and Judaism beyond the Covenant: Universal Humanistic Elements in Jewish Culture - Past and Present.
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya
The IDC in Herzliya offers five courses in the Posen Project. They are Judaism and Jews in the Cradle of Modernism, What is Judaism, and Who are the Jews - From Spinoza and Mendelsohn to Kaplan and Levinas: History and Thought, The Formation of a Secular Culture: Festivals and Carnivals in Eretz Israel and in Israel, The Hebrew Folk-Legend: From Traditional Values to Subversive Tendencies, and Jews and Other Minoriites: Nationalism, Migration and Ethnic Identity in Modern Times.
The Kerem Institute for Teacher Training for Humanist-Jewish Education
The Kerem Institute offers two courses, To Be a Jew in the Modern World and Jewish Thought in the Era of Secularism and Modernization.
Open University
Course outlines to follow when available.
Haifa University
The program includes the following courses: Introduction to Secular Jewish Culture and Thought, The Modernization and Secularization of the Jewish Society, Between Zionism and Anti-Semitism, Secularization of Jewish Minorities in the Age of Nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe, From Tsene Urene to the Core of Secular Judaism: Selected Issues in the History of Yiddish Culture during the 19-20 Centuries, and Introduction to Ladino Culture.
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