Check out a few of our upcoming course offerings for the summer. For a complete list, click here!
Posted in
News & Events on March 26, 2023
Professor Andrea Cooper, Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Scholar in Modern Jewish Thought and Culture, has recently appeared on a podcast discussing her book Gendering Modern Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press, 2021).
Check out the podcast here!
The idea of brotherhood has been an important philosophical concept for understanding community, equality, and justice. In Gendering Modern Jewish Thought (Indiana UP, 2021), Andrea Dara Cooper offers a gendered reading that challenges the key figures of the all-male fraternity of twentieth-century Jewish philosophy to open up to the feminine.
Cooper offers a feminist lens, which when applied to thinkers such as Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, reveals new ways of illuminating questions of relational ethics, embodiment, politics, and positionality. She shows that patriarchal kinship as models of erotic love, brotherhood, and paternity are not accidental in Jewish philosophy, but serve as norms that have excluded women and non-normative individuals.
Gendering Modern Jewish Thought suggests these fraternal models do real damage and must be brought to account in more broadly humanistic frameworks. For Cooper, a more responsible and ethical reading of Jewish philosophy comes forward when it is opened to the voices of mothers, sisters, and daughters.
![Gendering Modern Jewish Thought (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought) by [Andrea Dara Cooper]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41-GAXdnjrL.jpg)
Posted in
News & Events on March 24, 2023
Posted in
News & Events on March 24, 2023
Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, serves as the director of the Huqoq Excavation Site in Israel. She and a cohort of students are working to uncover ancient mosaics at the ancient Galilee village to decipher whether Judaism declined or flourished during the rise of Christianity. Magness is challenging long-held opinions about Jewish history.
“What Jodi is doing with this excavation is reshaping the way we think about Judaism in this historical period,” said Robert Rhinehart, a rising junior at Carolina. Rhinehart has spent two summers in Huqoq and now plans to pursue a career in archaeology because of Magness’ influence. He said it feels “crazy to think that you’re a part of her historically changing research.”
To read more of this story, please click the links below:
Posted in
News & Events on March 1, 2023
Carolina Center for Jewish Studies
Grad Student: Career Roundtable
March 1, 2022, 4:30pm, Hyde Hall Incubator Room. Hybrid Event.
Tine Rassalle, a graduate of our department, will be sharing her experience regarding career opportunities. This will be a valuable opportunity for grad students to learn more about the job market beyond tenure track jobs.
“The Center’s grad student network event for 2022-23 will feature a panel of our alumni, and our recently hired faculty member, in a variety of academic and academic-adjacent positions to discuss career opportunities and job hunting skills with current Carolina grad students and alumni of the Center. Dinner will be provided for those attending in-person.”
Posted in
News & Events on February 28, 2023
Mark your calendars for this exciting event on March 1, 2023! Prof. Jodi Magness will deliver a lecture on Zoom entitled “More Than Just Mosaics: The Ancient Synagogue at Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee,” to benefit the Miller Fund for Graduate Students. No gift required to attend. We hope to see you there!
Posted in
Faculty News,
Graduate Student News,
News & Events on February 23, 2023
Webinar by Professor Jodi Magness Hosted by Prof. Bart D. Ehrman (This event will not be recorded)
Time: Mar 1, 2023 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Since 2011, Professor Jodi Magness has been directing excavations in the ancient village of Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee. The excavations have brought to light the remains of a monumental Late Roman (fifth century) synagogue building paved with stunning and unique mosaics, including biblical scenes and the first non-biblical story ever discovered decorating an ancient synagogue. In this slide-illustrated lecture, Professor Magness describes these exciting finds, including the discoveries made in last summer’s season. For more information visit www.huqoq.org.
About the Lecturer: Jodi Magness (www.JodiMagness.org) is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Past President of the Archaeological Institute of America. Magness’ research interests, which focus on Palestine in the Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, and Diaspora Judaism in the Roman world, include ancient pottery, ancient synagogues, Jerusalem, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Roman army in the East.
FUNDRAISER FOR THE ROBERT MILLER GRADUATE STUDENT EXCELLENCE FUND
The person who makes the largest gift will receive a free signed copy of Jodi Magness’ 2019 book, Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
To make a gift to the Robert Miller Graduate Student Excellence Fund, please go to: https://give.unc.edu/donate?f=105550&p=asrs
The Robert Miller Graduate Student Excellence Fund honors an exceptional academic editor and provides support for our graduate students to present their research in scholarly venues and conferences across the country and around the world.
Posted in
Events,
News & Events on February 23, 2023
Last Thursday, February 16, the Religious Studies department hosted a trivia night with food and prizes. It was an opportunity for undergraduates (majors, minors, and others interested in religious studies) to get together for a social evening with faculty and graduate students.
Posted in
News & Events on February 22, 2023
Religious studies professor Joseph Lam has recently released a 12-lecture course on Wondrium (formerly The Great Courses). This course, entitled “Creation Stories of the Ancient World,” is now available online. You can watch the trailer and see more information here:
Creation Stories of the Ancient World | Wondrium
Overview of the course: Creation stories—which recount the origins of the universe, the earth, and humanity—show us how ancient cultures made sense of the human condition. In this course, you’ll explore great creation texts such as the Babylonian Creation Epic, the Egyptian Memphite Theology, the Hittite Kumarbi Cycle, the Greek Theogony of Hesiod, the two contrasting accounts of creation in the biblical Genesis, and more.
Joseph Lam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. He is the author of Patterns of Sin in the Hebrew Bible: Metaphor, Culture, and the Making of a Religious Concept, as well as a number of scholarly articles in the fields of Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic studies. He teaches ancient languages beyond Hebrew, such as Akkadian, Aramaic/Syriac, and Ugaritic.
Posted in
News & Events on February 22, 2023
Click below to listen to a fantastic podcast entitled “Trifecta of the Abrahamic Religions” from our Kenan Distinguished Professor in teaching excellence, Jodi Magness:
Posted in
News & Events on February 20, 2023
