The Program

In response to the growing prominence of art and culture within the contemporary Jewish community, this 12 credit program of four courses offers both emerging and seasoned professionals an opportunity to deepen their understanding of Jewish cultural expression and its relationship to community building and civic engagement. Students emerge from their training with the knowledge and skills necessary to be effective advocates for and proponents of the arts in settings that range from the classroom to the gallery. As one of its graduates put it recently, GW’s program is an “open invitation to delve into Jewish cultural life and to apply it to today’s vibrant community. It opened so many doors for me.”

Requirements

The four required courses that constitute the spine of the program can be taken over a period of two years.  They include:

*Contemporary Jewish Life:  a whirlwind inquiry into the complexities of today’s Jewish community.
*Multiple Lives:  a look at the changing ways in which classic Jewish books, plays and films engaged audiences over time.
*Displaying Jewish Culture:  an inquiry into landmark Jewish exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Israel.
*Soundscapes:  taking stock of American Jewry’s acoustic landscape, from the making of noise to the making of music.
*Introduction to Experiential Jewish Education: an overview of the institutions, structures and sensibilities of the American Jewish education system.

Information

Please contact Jenna Weissman Joselit, the program’s director, for more details about the Graduate Certificate in Jewish Cultural Arts. She can be found at [email protected].  You can also check out her blog, “From Under the Fig Tree.” For more information on general Graduate Certificate requirements, please visit the CCAS Graduate Certificate page. 

Students already pursuing a GW degree can enroll in a Fall 2018 course. Credits for this course will be applied to the Jewish Cultural Arts certificate program. For students first planning on applying to GW, the certificate program would begin in the Spring 2019 term.