Yediaut is the newletter from the Center for Israel Studies and the Jewish Studies Program at American University.
The past year was exhilarating for American University's Jewish Studies Program and the Center for Israel Studies. When Jewish Studies first emerged at American University in the early 1970s, it refracted Jewish civilization through the prisms of religion, history, and Jewish languages and literatures. Few, if any, could have anticipated the new directions it would take. Responding to new faculty and student interests in Jewish studies, AU helped lead the way into Holocaust studies and Israel studies. This past year AU continued to further these directions through Prof. Richard Breitman's new scholarship on the Holocaust, our conference "IsraelBiz@60," and our groundbreaking exhibit Personal Landscapes: Contemporary Art from Israel.
Now we look forward to a new year. Thanks to the generosity of the Jewish Studies Expansion Project, we welcome to our campus Tatjana Lichtenstein, one of the first Schusterman Teaching Fellows in Jewish Studies in the nation. Yoram Peri is a visiting professor again, this time as the Dollye and Wolford Berman Visiting Professor of Israel Studies. Finally, we welcome home literature professors Marcela Sulak, who spent last spring in Israel as visiting poet at Bar-Ilan University's Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Program, and Michael Wenthe, who returns from a semester at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
Our activities would not be possible without your generosity. We invite you to continue your support for the Jewish Studies Program, the Center for Israel Studies, and the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Endowment. With your help, we look forward to advancing Jewish studies and Israel studies in new directions for many more years to come.
