Katz Makes a MOOC!

In June, the Katz Center partnered with Penn Libraries and the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) to launch their first MOOC. This Massive Open Online Course brings together the Katz Center’s scholarly networks with the extraordinary collections of SIMS to push Jewish scholarship into an exciting new collaborative space, and to reach interested audiences worldwide.

The MOOC is a forty-minute minicourse by Professor Y. Tzvi Langermann (Bar-Ilan University), the first SIMS-Katz fellow. Langermann presents a case study that builds from a unique manuscript codex produced in the 15th century containing three important medical manuscripts in Judeo-Arabic. Compiled in Sicily by a physician identified as David ben Shalom, the manuscript bears witness to the rich cultural exchanges among Latin, Jewish, and Arabic communities during this time, especially in the sciences. Professor Langermann not only walks the student through the basics of medical knowledge training and practice in the Jewish Middle Ages and beyond, but also shows how clues gleaned from elements of a particular manuscript (such as marginal notes, mistakes, and handwriting) shed light on the purpose and use of these texts. The course includes eight short video lectures that explore the highlights of this extraordinary manuscript.

Over 1000 students initially enrolled in the course, guided by NELC doctoral student Marc Herman, who served as Teaching Assistant. [Editorial insertion: As of September 2018, over 4500 students had taken the course.] The course is offered free to anyone with an internet connection and an email address, and it can be accessed at any time through edX.org (PennX-Katz1.1x, or search for “Langermann”). The course is self-paced and takes about 2 hours to complete. The content will not be inaccessible to the novice but the nature of the material and the level of scholarship should interest graduate students and colleagues from a range of disciplines as well. There is an active discussion forum, and a link to the full manuscript in digital form.

This MOOC is the first in a series on Jewish manuscripts that will emerge from the SIMS-Katz partnership in the coming years. The next installment will be taught by Professor Alessandro Guetta (INALCO, Paris), and begins production this winter.

This fellowship is funded in part by the David B. Ruderman Distinguished Fellowship.