The New Jewish American Literary Studies

Introduces readers to the new perspectives, approaches and interpretive possibilities in Jewish American literature that emerged in the twenty-first Century.

Victoria Aarons (Edited by)

9781108426282, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 April 2019

242 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

The opening decades of the twenty-first century are distinguished by a newly framed and regenerated outlook of Jewish American literary studies. This volume introduces readers to the new perspectives, new approaches, and widening of interpretive possibilities in Jewish American literature accompanied by the changes of the new millennium. Now that we are over a decade into a new century, the field of Jewish American literary studies has begun to reshape itself in response to a 'new diaspora', a newly defined sense not only of Jewish American literature, but of America, an expansion of new genres, new voices, and new platforms of expression. This book re-evaluates questions of race, feminism, gender, sexuality, orthodoxy, assimilation, identity politics, and historical alienation that shape Jewish American literary studies. Several chapters show the influence of other cultures on the field such as Iranian-American-Jewish writing, Israeli-American, and Latin American literary expression, as well as the impact of Russian emigres.

Introduction: toward a New Jewish American literary studies Victoria Aarons
Part I. Concepts: 1. 'Jewish American' or 'American Jewish': the hybrid in literary studies Berel Lang
2. A new diaspora: Jewish American writers from across the globe Victoria Aarons
3. Wrestling with politics: Jewish American writing from left to right (and back again) Michael Staub
4. Israel and America in Jewish American writing Eli Lederhendler
5. Jewish American writing and race Dean Franco
6. Gender and feminism in contemporary Jewish American writing Jessica Lang
Part II. Contexts: 7. Rethinking postwar Jewish American writers Timothy Parrish
8. The insistence of psychoanalysis in contemporary Jewish American fiction Willis Salomon
9. Reimagining the past, imagining the future: myth, history, and mystery in contemporary Jewish American fiction David Brauner
10. Women's voices: the assimilated subject and the persistence of marginalisation Catherine Morley
11. A guide for the heretic: charting the journey off the path of tradition Avinoam Patt
Part III. 'New' Forms and Histories: 12. Rethinking literary and ethical response to the Holocaust: reading 'with Hitler in New York' Gary Weissman
13. Jews in contemporary cinema and television Nathan Abrams
14. Story into memoir, memoir into story: Iranian-Jewish-American writing Judie Newman
15. Jewish-Latin American literature Darrell B. Lockhart
16. Jewish American literary studies abroad Gustavo Sánchez Canales.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literature: history & criticism [DS]