U of Ideas of General Interest ó December 1998 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
CULTURAL STUDIES Interdisciplinary Jewish studies program undergoing rapid growth
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ó University academic programs typically build slowly, one steady step at a time. The Jewish studies program at the University of Illinois started typically enough nearly 20 years ago, but in the last year it has made a ìgreat leap forward.î
So says Michael Shapiro, director of the U. of I.Ãs year-old Drobny Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of Jewish Culture and Society, formerly the Committee on Jewish Culture and Society.
According to Shapiro, who is a professor of English at the U. of I., the Drobny program has since its inception 12 months ago added two promising young faculty members, with another one to follow next year. With the new professors ñ ìtotally committed in their teaching and research to the subject of Jewish culture and its interactions with other culturesî ñ also have come several new courses, new workshops and of course, new students, Shapiro said.
Jan Schwarz is one pillar of the new Drobny program. Having joined the U. of I.Ãs department of Germanic languages and literatures in August, Schwarz is teaching Yiddish 101, a language new to the campusÃs repertoire. Yiddish 102, 103 and 104 will be added over the next three semesters. Come spring, Schwarz will add a course on Yiddish literature, and next fall, he will offer classic Yiddish fiction. He also plans to teach Yiddish film, poetry and drama and modern Yiddish autobiography ñ his research specialty.
Modern Yiddish autobiography ìfocuses on the collective and the collective experience,î Schwarz said, and ìis distinguished as a genre by the authorÃs reluctance to expose ëthe self.à î
Matti Bunzl, a new U. of I. professor of anthropology, is the other new pillar in the Drobny program. He is teaching a new course, ìAnthropology of Jews and Judaism,î an exploration of the origins and evolution of Jewish culture.
Another sign of growth: The Drobny program supports a Judaica Library Collection and it has provided grants to the U. of I. Press this year to publish two books, ìShadows of Treblinka,î by Miriam and Saul Kuperhand and ìIn the Shadow of the Swastika,î by Hermann Wygoda.
What has made all of this growth possible was an endowment to expand the mission of the Committee on Jewish Culture. In September 1997, Anita and Sheldon Drobny of Highland Park, Ill., and their associates in the Paradigm Group announced they were giving $7.2 million to the Urbana and Chicago campuses. Their gift, Shapiro said, ìis probably the largest donation ever made to a non-seminary Jewish studies program in North America.î With the gift, Illinois is pushing to become ìone of the major centers of Judaica and Jewish Studies on the continent,î Shapiro said.
Shapiro said part of whatÃs fueling Jewish studies nationwide, in addition to generous gifts such as the DrobnysÃ, is ìan intense interest by Jews and others in the Jewish experience as another paradigm of how minorities function, how diasporas work.î
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