Michigan Consortium for Israel Studies (MCIS)
The Michigan Consortium for Israel Studies (MCIS) was formed to expand the student opportunity to study abroad in Israel. Institutions affiliated with this consortium include Albion College, Central Michigan University, University of Detroit Mercy, Eastern Michigan University, Northern Michigan University, Saginaw Valley State University, and Western Michigan. Because of the commitment of these member institutions, The Nora and Guy Barron Fund for Israel Study Abroad has donated considerable funding, and each student participant will have approximately $5,000 applied to their program expenses.
In summer 2023, a cohort of students from institutions affiliated with the MCIS will live on Tel Aviv University campus for four weeks and take two courses, Imagining the Holy Land, a course taught by Eastern Michigan University Professor Marty Shichtman and Albion College Professor Dr. Jocelyn McWhirter, and a City Lab course taught by a faculty member at Tel Aviv University.
Imagining the Holy Land (3 credits) Expand dropdownTaking a particularly close look at texts supporting various claims to “the Holy Land,” this course will ask students to consider why, for centuries, the three “peoples of the book,” Jews, Christians, and Muslims, have engaged in hostilities. The course will ask students to think about how religious, racial, and political identities are fashioned, how these identities are represented, and how these identities become, often enough, inextricably associated with territory. “Imagining the Holy Land” will ask students to look beyond their local sources for information and take a much wider perspective on Middle East controversy. Specifically it will ask students to think about how the discourses by which Christians, Jews, and Muslims have constituted their identities in relation to Israel/Palestine have proven, over the centuries, divisive.
City Lab: Experiencing Tel Aviv (3 credits) Expand dropdownStudents will take this course with students from all over the world who want to learn more about the Middle East and Israel. Designed to immerse students in Israel and Tel Aviv with a combination of class discussions and excursions into Israeli history. Students will explore the city together, taking into account the multiple perspectives of some of the different types of cultures and people living in Israel today. Join us through an in-depth exploration into the arts and media, politics, history, economics and the social practices of every day life in Tel Aviv.
