“Approaches to Teaching the Ghetto in a Global Context” is a tool to help teachers create and tailor courses on the broad topic of ghettos. “The Ghetto Syllabus” is divided into modular units that provide a set of learning objectives and suggested reading assignments. Each unit could be the basis for a semester-long course, or several units could be combined.

For each reading assignment, we have summarized the basic scope and/or argument of the text and assessed its level of difficulty for undergraduate students. Most also note what other texts, media, or activities could complement or augment that reading assignment. This allows maximum flexibility to instructors who may be designing a three-day a week lecture course or a weekly seminar, or teaching novice students or advanced undergraduates. Instructors may elect to assign a selection of the readings, all of the suggested readings, or expand the unit by assigning some of the suggested pairings in addition to the readings.

The units vary by topic, time period, geography, methodology, or discipline–for example, The Venice Ghetto: 1516-1797 is temporally and geographically limited and its learning objectives are primarily historical, whereas The Ghetto as Text in 19th Century Anglo-American Jewish Writings is global in scope and literary expanse. The units were designed to facilitate the teaching of interdisciplinary courses, and we encourage instructors to combine units and readings.

We invite colleagues to contribute their own modules, readings, or pairings by using the submission form. Our hope is that a cross-disciplinary group of instructors can build upon the framework we have created, through sharing their expertise and their experience in the classroom.