The Object of Jewish Literature

The Object of Jewish Literature
Author: Barbara E. Mann
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300234112

A history of modern Jewish literature that explores our enduring attachment to the book as an object With the rise of digital media, the "death of the book” has been widely discussed. But the physical object of the book persists. Here, through the lens of materiality and objects, Barbara E. Mann tells a history of modern Jewish literature, from novels and poetry to graphic novels and artists’ books. Bringing contemporary work on secularism and design in conversation with literary history, she offers a new and distinctive frame for understanding how literary genres emerge. The long twentieth century, a period of tremendous physical upheaval and geographic movement, witnessed the production of a multilingual canon of writing by Jewish authors. Literature’s objecthood is felt not only in the physical qualities of books—bindings, covers, typography, illustrations—but also through the ways in which materiality itself became a practical foundation for literary expression.

The Objects That Remain

The Objects That Remain
Author: Laura Levitt
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2020-09-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 027108877X

On a November evening in 1989, Laura Levitt was raped in her own bed. Her landlord heard the assault taking place and called 911, but the police arrived too late to apprehend Laura’s attacker. When they left, investigators took items with them—a pair of sweatpants, the bedclothes—and a rape exam was performed at the hospital. However, this evidence was never processed. Decades later, Laura returns to these objects, viewing them not as clues that will lead to the identification of her assailant but rather as a means of engaging traumatic legacies writ large. The Objects That Remain is equal parts personal memoir and fascinating examination of the ways in which the material remains of violent crimes inform our experience of, and thinking about, trauma and loss. Considering artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and evidence in police storage facilities across the country, Laura’s story moves between intimate trauma, the story of an unsolved rape, and genocide. Throughout, she asks what it might mean to do justice to these violent pasts outside the juridical system or through historical empiricism, which are the dominant ways in which we think about evidence from violent crimes and other highly traumatic events. Over the course of her investigation, the author reveals how these objects that remain and the stories that surround them enable forms of intimacy. In this way, she models for us a different kind of reckoning, where justice is an animating process of telling and holding.

The Object of Jewish Literature

The Object of Jewish Literature
Author: Barbara E. Mann
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300265387

A history of modern Jewish literature that explores our enduring attachment to the book as an object With the rise of digital media, the "death of the book” has been widely discussed. But the physical object of the book persists. Here, through the lens of materiality and objects, Barbara E. Mann tells a history of modern Jewish literature, from novels and poetry to graphic novels and artists’ books. Bringing contemporary work on secularism and design in conversation with literary history, she offers a new and distinctive frame for understanding how literary genres emerge. The long twentieth century, a period of tremendous physical upheaval and geographic movement, witnessed the production of a multilingual canon of writing by Jewish authors. Literature’s objecthood is felt not only in the physical qualities of books—bindings, covers, typography, illustrations—but also through the ways in which materiality itself became a practical foundation for literary expression.

The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature

The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature
Author: Hana Wirth-Nesher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 884
Release: 2015-12-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316395340

This History offers an unparalleled examination of all aspects of Jewish American literature. Jewish writing has played a central role in the formation of the national literature of the United States, from the Hebraic sources of the Puritan imagination to narratives of immigration and acculturation. This body of writing has also enriched global Jewish literature in its engagement with Jewish history and Jewish multilingual culture. Written by a host of leading scholars, The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature offers an array of approaches that contribute to current debates about ethnic writing, minority discourse, transnational literature, gender studies, and multilingualism. This History takes a fresh look at celebrated authors, introduces new voices, locates Jewish American literature on the map of American ethnicity as well as the spaces of exile and diaspora, and stretches the boundaries of American literature beyond the Americas and the West.

An Inch Or Two of Time

An Inch Or Two of Time
Author: Jordan D. Finkin
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Hebrew poetry, Modern
ISBN: 9780271066417

Explores the metaphorical power of time and space in Jewish modernist poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish as a response to the experience of exile and landlessness, and as a means of furthering modernism's exploration of the self and its relation to community, nation, and the world.

The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture

The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture
Author: Bozena Shallcross
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2011-02-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0253005094

In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, BoÅ1⁄4ena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objects -- pots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensils -- tangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here as cultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Szlengel, Zofia NaÅ‚kowska, CzesÅ‚aw MiÅ‚osz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time.

Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?

Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?
Author: Adam Kirsch
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300245130

From one of today’s keenest critics comes a collection of essays on poetry, religion, and the connection between the two Adam Kirsch is one of today’s finest literary critics. This collection brings together his essays on poetry, religion, and the intersections between them, with a particular focus on Jewish literature. He explores the definition of Jewish literature, the relationship between poetry and politics, and the future of literary reputation in the age of the internet. Several essays look at the way Jewish writers such as Stefan Zweig and Isaac Deutscher, who coined the phrase “the non-Jewish Jew,” have dealt with politics. Kirsch also examines questions of spirituality and morality in the writings of contemporary poets, including Christian Wiman, Kay Ryan, and Seamus Heaney. He closes by asking why so many American Jewish writers have resisted that category, inviting us to consider “Is there such a thing as Jewish literature?”

Precious Objects

Precious Objects
Author: Alicia Oltuski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2011-07-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 143917170X

In the middle of New York City lies a neighborhood where all secrets are valuable, all assets are liquid, and all deals are sealed with a blessing rather than a contract. Welcome to the diamond district. Ninety percent of all diamonds that enter America pass through these few blocks, but the inner workings of this mysterious world are known only to the people who inhabit it. In Precious Objects, twenty-six-year-old journalist Alicia Oltuski, the daughter and granddaughter of diamond dealers, seamlessly blends family narrative with literary reportage to reveal the fascinating secrets of the diamond industry and its madcap characters: an Elvis-impersonating dealer, a duo of diamond-detective brothers, and her own eccentric father. With insight and drama, Oltuski limns her family’s diamond-paved move from communist Siberia to a displaced persons camp in post–World War II Germany to New York’s diamond district, exploring the connections among Jews and the industry, the gem and its lore, and the exotic citizens of this secluded world. Entertaining and illuminating, Precious Objects offers an insider’s look at the history, business, and society behind one of the world’s most coveted natural resources, providing an unforgettable backstage pass to an extraordinary and timeless show.

Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism

Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism
Author: Paul Egan Nahme
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253039762

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) is often held to be one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the nineteenth century. Paul E. Nahme, in this new consideration of Cohen, liberalism, and religion, emphasizes the idea of enchantment, or the faith in and commitment to ideas, reason, and critique—the animating spirits that move society forward. Nahme views Cohen through the lenses of the crises of Imperial Germany—the rise of antisemitism, nationalism, and secularization—to come to a greater understanding of liberalism, its Protestant and Jewish roots, and the spirits of modernity and tradition that form its foundation. Nahme's philosophical and historical retelling of the story of Cohen and his spiritual investment in liberal theology present a strong argument for religious pluralism and public reason in a world rife with populism, identity politics, and conspiracy theories.