Course Information

Instructor: Joshua Teplitsky

Location: Los Angeles / UCLA

Mode: In-person

Dates: July 28–August 1, 2025

Tuition: $1200.00

Course Description

Jews are often held up as a “people of the book,” in a fashion that approaches cliché. In this course we will examine the people and their actual books, taking the example of the media of Jews as a diaspora population to explore the making and re-making of books in their historical context. Jews’ adoption and adaptation of media forms at times paralleled and at other times diverged from that of their dominant ambient cultures, and offers a valuable lens to confront transmissions of Jewish culture on its own terms as well as a prism to encounter wider media shifts in politics, culture, gender, and religion. The course will focus primary on the medieval and early modern periods, with framings from antiquity through the digital era, with case studies from the ancient Near East, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The course will be conducted through readings of primary and secondary sources, but will, most importantly, revolve around the examination of material objects and their design and dimensions at the literal center of the table and the core of class discussion.