Miriam Dean-Otting joined the faculty in 1984. In addition to RLST 101 and 103: Women and Religion, she teaches courses in Jewish Studies, including The Judaic Tradition, Modern Judaism, Jews in Literature and occasionally The Holocaust. She teaches Religion and Nature and lectures in ENVS 112 annually. She also teaches a course on the Hebrew Scriptures and a topical course called Prophecy. She offers Classical Hebrew as an independent study. Her research interests lie in the intersections between Jews and the non-Jewish cultures in which Jews have made their home. Her publications have focused on Hellenistic Jewry, Jews in Germany and Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in conflict resolution and dialogue between Jews and Arabs in Modern Israel. She has engaged in a study of the Jewish community of Calcutta (Kolkata), India.

Education

Ph.D. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Instititute of Religion
A.B. Kenyon College

Selected Publications

"Assimilation and Teshuvah in Two Generations of Czech Jewish Women: Berta Fanta and Else Fanta Bergmann," in Forging Modern Jewish Identities: Public Faces and Private Struggles, Michael Berkowitz, Susan Tananbaum and Sam Bloom, eds. (Vallentine-Mitchell, 2003)

"Rootlessness and Alienation in the Poetry of Helen Degen Cohen" Shofar (Fall, 2002)

Guest Editor, "Spotlight on Teaching the Holocaust," Religious Studies News (November, 2000)

"Spontaneity in Teaching: Incorporating Current Vatican Publications on the Jews into a Course on Modern Judaism," Shofar (Summer 1999)

Courses Taught

RLST 103 Women in Religion (First-Year Seminar)
RLST 211 Modern Judaism
RLST 310 The Hebrew Scriptures
RLST 382 Prophecy
RLST 481 Religion and Nature
RLST 490 Senior Seminar in Religion