Digital Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz: Reimagining Teaching, Learning, and Research

• In Event: Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop

Abstract

The Center for Jewish Studies at UC Santa Cruz has launched a Digital Jewish Studies Initiative, sponsored by the Koret Foundation. This program supports innovative research, teaching, and learning in an effort to transform Jewish studies on campus. Led by Nathaniel Deutsch and Rachel Deblinger, this effort provides Jewish Studies students with repeated opportunities to hone new skills and apply digital tools to the work of understanding Jewish life.

We are in a moment of transition as digital tools become part of our scholarly practices. Digital archives, social media platforms, mapping tools and computational analysis enable new forms of connections and knowledge making. The Digital Jewish Studies initiative seeks to bring these methods to bear on the work of Jewish Studies. More, we seek to bring these innovative approaches into the classroom so that students can interact directly with primary sources and consider public audiences in relation to their study of Jewish text, culture and people.

In the past two years, our efforts have yielded:
> Two new Jewish History courses (The Holocaust in the Digital Age and The Intellectual History of Zionism)
> The integration of digital tools and assignments into five additional Jewish Studies courses
> Campus events that address the intersection of Jewish Studies and digital tools
> An Undergraduate Digital Research Symposium that showcased the use of digital tools in classrooms across campus
> A provocative conversation at the 2016 AJS Conference about digital projects
> An AJS Webinar about Digital Tools in the Classroom
> Support for research projects led by faculty and graduate students

This digital presentation will feature the new website of our initiative and offer a chance for engaging the AJS community in a conversation about what Digital Jewish Studies should look like. This website will include posts from students who built digital projects in Jewish Studies classes, offer reflections on the process of doing digital research, and curate teaching materials that can be used at campuses across the country. In particular, the website will provide access to new syllabi and assignments developed at UC Santa Cruz that integrate digital methods into the practice of analyzing and communicating about the Jewish past.

Authors

• Rachel Deblinger, University of California, Santa Cruz

• Nathaniel Deutsch, University of California, Santa Cruz