Judaic and Israel Studies

The Schusterman Center for Judaic and Israel Studies at the University of Oklahoma is the largest home for its fields in the region. With six core faculty members and eighteen associated faculty members, it offers more than sixty courses as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees. The center holds at least a dozen academic events every year, and awards thousands of dollars of scholarships to OU students studying on the Norman Campus and through OU Education Abroad.

Judaic Studies explores the history and culture of the Jewish people over a period of four millennia in the Land of Israel and in the Diaspora (Dispersion) through the tools of the humanities and the social sciences. The field began as an academic discipline in Europe during the nineteenth century and developed within universities and research centers the world over during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Israel Studies is a much more recent field dedicated to interpreting the culture, politics and society of the modern State of Israel.