Eastern Michigan University has built a new Center for Jewish Studies. Martin Shichtman has been the director of Jewish studies for six years at Eastern. There has been a Jewish studies minor since March 2012 and Shichtman has been trying to get the center up and running since then.
“We are now a permanent EMU entity,” Shichtman said.
The new program will be under the umbrella of the College of Arts and Sciences. The center will focus on Jewish studies in linguistics, journalism, travel and English. With a permanent entity, the center will be able to significantly increase its ability for grant application writing, research, donor outreach and outgoing institutional work.
It will have its offices on the fourth floor of Pray-Harrold. This will be home to a conference space, library and the Jewish Oral History Project: Jewish Life and Language in Southeast Michigan.
“This new project combines Jewish studies, EMU linguistics, journalism… It’s an oral history project which seeks to find out if there is something like a Jewish language in the Midwest and whether it continues to persist much past immigration,” Shichtman said.
The Jewish studies minor is interdisciplinary and borrows faculty from other departments and projects. They have faculty to cover subjects ranging from English and journalism to history and theater.
Schictman said there have been very few students graduating with the minor “partially because the program is very new” and because of the “boutique” nature of the program.
Some students take these classes because they are Jewish, but there are also a number of students from various different religious backgrounds who are interested in the Jewish religion. Some students take it to explore the effect of Jewish-American culture on the United States, including everything from painting and the media to the performing arts. This is included in one of the program’s travel classes, Jewish Identity in American Theater, where students get to explore how “Jews were part and parcel to what we call theater in America.”
While the actual space for the Center hasn’t been selected yet, Shichtman expects it to be open by the fall semester of 2016. In the meantime, Shichtman will begin to gather furniture and supplies for the Center to get it on its feet.
