The aim of this course, offered in English without prerequisites, is
to familiarize students with some of the chief features of modern
Israeli life and culture. The course does not presume any prior
familiarity with the subject. We will read in order to acquire
familiarity with Hebrew literature and its role as mirror of a
society in transformation. Readings will be from required texts and
library holdings. The readings, mostly short stories, a few poems,
excerpts from a novel and one non-fiction study, are translations
from some of the best works in recent Hebrew literature. Our goal is
to trace back to the early 1900s and move chronologically from the
early writers in Hebrew from the tradition of European writing (S. Y.
Agnon, Dvorah Baron, Y. H. Brenner), through the middle generation of
Israeli writers in pre-1948 Israel (S. Yizhar, A. Megged, N. Shaham),
the Holocaust experience (D. Fogel, A. Appelfeld) and the new writers
of post War of Independence Israel to the present. The emphasis of
this course will be on the latter period. We will be reading texts by
Amos Oz, David Grossman, Yehudah Amichai, A. B. Yehoshua, A. Kahana-
Karmon, N. Zach, Meir Shalev and others.