This course surveys some of the founding works of modern literature, psychology, cultural studies, and literary criticism by writers like Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida. We will discuss how they analyze dreams and free-associations (Freud), private fantasies and public bureaucracies (Kafka), storytelling practices and city planning (Benjamin), and language machines and autobiographies (Derrida). Short works by all of these writers will be read alongside biographical and critical essays exploring how they confronted their Jewish roots in a modernizing Europe.