Classroom Innovation

We seek to transform the lives of our students +
Build Classroom Models that inspire new approaches to Jewish Studies

History of Zionism | Nathaniel Deutsch
Taught Spring 2017, Spring 2018

New Classes

This course includes the creation of digital modules to be used at UCSC and by other instructors across the country and around the world. The modules facilitate new approaches to teaching the history of Zionism by creating content that considers Zionist ideas in the context of 19th Century Europe. Students work collaboratively to build introductory websites focused on a variety of Zionisms. Mapping and other digital methods invite students to think about variants of Zionism spatially, historically, biographically, and visually.

Holocaust in the Digital World | Rachel Deblinger
Taught Fall 2016, Winter 2018

This course explores how digital tools change the way we know about the Holocaust. During the quarter students focus on (1) critically understanding and analyzing digital representations of the Holocaust and (2) using and developing skills to engage with knowledge about the Holocaust through digital tools.

To do so, the course highlights a variety of representational forms including films, television, video testimony, online databases and repositories, museum exhibits, memorial websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and more. By tracing representations of the Holocaust across platforms and over time, students discuss how changes in technology and media intersect with developments in international politics and cultural norms to define narratives about the Holocaust and its survivors. They also learn to use digital methodologies to build maps, perform text-based quantitative analysis, and curate online exhibits.

Visualizing American Jewish History | Rachel Deblinger
Taught Fall 2018

This course is a survey of the Jewish experience in America interpreted through digital means. Mapping, data visualization and multi-modal storytelling methods help us understand the religious, cultural, and political activities of American Jews. In particular, we use these tools to juxtapose a collective Jewish identity with individual voices and experiences. To do so, we will consider how data and demography have become central in assessing the American Jewish community and how podcasts have become a space for expressing a range of challenging and interconnected American Jewish identities. Our approach to these tools will be guided by central themes including immigration, modern antisemitism, gender, religious practice and identity, communal life, and an American response to the Holocaust. Centering digital methods in our examination of American Jewish History will allow us to consider historical trends alongside the lived experience of American Jews while also providing insight into how Jews have collected and told their own history.

Throughout these various approaches to the history of American Jewry, we will remain attuned to broader questions about anti-Semitism, assimilation, and secularization, as we focus on how individual Jews understand their place in a broader community and how they enact and pass on Jewish identity.

 

Digital Assignments

Jewish Studies courses now regularly invite students to share and express their knowledge through digital tools, including:

 

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