Bodies, Desire, and Sexuality in Eastern European Jewish History
An online course on Jewish bodies, desire, and sexuality in Eastern Europe, held Tuesdays from October 6 to November 3 on Zoom. Classes run 6:00–7:30pm ET.
This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 20 students. This class will be conducted in English.
5 Sessions | Tuesdays, 6:00pm – 7:30pm ET
October 6, 13, 20, 27
November 3
Instructor: Aleksandra Jakubczak
Course Description:
This course explores how Jews in Eastern Europe understood and experienced the body, sexuality, and desire in the modern era. Rather than treating sexuality as confined to marriage or family life, the course examines a wide range of intimate experiences and practices, including premarital and extramarital sex, prostitution, same-sex desire, sexual violence, and other forms of non-normative sexuality. Through autobiographies, memoirs, newspapers, court cases of rape, and statistical sources on prostitution, students will investigate how different groups understood and navigated changing sexual norms. By placing bodies and sexuality at the center of historical inquiry, the course explores how Eastern European Jews responded to the pressures of modernization and social change while challenging enduring stereotypes of the "Old World" as a static, uniformly traditional, and sexually repressed society.
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