Folklore and Folklife - Courses - Spring 2007

For more information about Folklore and Folklife,at UPenn, contact Professor Dan Ben-Amos at dbamos@sas.upenn.edu.

For assistance with the Folklore and Folklife website, contact Linda Lee at lindalee@sas.upenn.edu.

FOLK 296 401 Jewish Humor

D. Ben Amos
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday 10:30-12:00 Noon
Cross-listed with JWST 296, NELC 254
DISTRIBUTION III: ARTS & LETTERS
Contact: dbamos@sas.upenn.edu

In modern American popular culture Jewish humor is considered by Jews and non-Jews as a recognizable and distinct form of humor. Focusing upon folk-humor, in this course we will examine the history of this perception, and study different manifestation of Jewish humor as a particular case study of ethnic humor in general. Specific topics for analysis will be: humor in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish humor in Europe and in America, JAP and JAM jokes, Jewish tricksters and pranksters, Jewish humor in the Holocaust and Jewish humor in Israel. The term paper will be a collecting project of Jewish jokes.

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