Historytelling as Ritual - Fall 2024

First-year writing seminar, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

History happens all around us, all the time. We live it through stories, events, and experiences. Drawing on a range of media and site visits, this course offers an exploration of historytelling through the lens of anthropology. Questions at the heart of this seminar include, “What makes history?”; “How is it told and who does the telling?”; and “What is its role in shaping our individual and collective experiences, identities, and beliefs?”. Reading and viewing works by anthropologists, artists, archaeologists, and cultural critics, we will practice our own documentary and descriptive skills. Through their writing, students are invited to consider the sociocultural, religious, and political aspects of memory, myth, and storytelling.

Jewish Folklore - Spring 2025

Undergraduate course, Jewish Studies Department, Hamilton College

What is folklore and what does it have to do with the study of Jewish cultures? How do Jewish folkloric traditions reflect community values, rituals, and beliefs? What can we glean from the diverse storytelling traditions of Jewish lifeworlds across time and space, including ideas about identity, belonging, and relationships to the natural and supernatural world? This course draws on a diverse range of themes and media related to Jewish cultural practices and folkways, covering topics such as gender, humanity, life and death, sacred space, magic, and medicine. We will explore scriptural, musical, and art historical traditions of meaning-making, while analyzing scholarship across Jewish studies, anthropology of religion, and critical heritage studies. Films such as the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man (2009), theatrical adaptations of playwright S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk (1920), museum exhibitions, and cultural landscapes are a few examples of the varied materials we will investigate ethnographically through the lens of Jewish folklife.