Social groups: religious groups and communities Books

Book SynopsisProvides a close reading of Rutu Modan's work and examines her role in creating a comics arts scene in Israel. Drawing on archival research, Kevin Haworth traces the history of Israeli comics from its beginning in the 1930s, to the counterculture movement of the 1970s, to the burst of creativity that began in the 1990s and continues today.

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Book SynopsisHearing Allah's Call changes the way we think about Islamic communication. In the city of Bandung in Indonesia, sermons are not reserved for mosques and sites for Friday prayers. Muslim speakers are in demand for all kinds of events, from rites of passage to motivational speeches for companies and other organizations. Julian Millie spent fourteen months sitting among listeners at such events, and he provides detailed contextual description of the everyday realities of Muslim listening as well as preaching. In describing the venues, the audience, and preachersmany of whom are womenhe reveals tensions between entertainment and traditional expressions of faith and moral rectitude. The sermonizers use in-jokes, double entendres, and mimicry in their expositions, playing on their audiences' emotions, triggering reactions from critics who accuse them of neglecting listeners' intellects. Millie focused specifically on the listening routines that enliven everyday life for MuslTrade ReviewA richly-textured and critically insightful ethnography of Islamic preaching in contemporary Indonesia.... [The book succeeds in] stimulating critical reflections on modes of cultural production and religious communication that are potentially important for scholars working on contemporary Muslim societies well beyond the borders of Indonesia. * Reading Religion *Offers much more than a thorough analysis of Islamic preaching, as it provides inspiring reflections on today's emerging Muslim publics that a readership interested in the development of Islamic societies generally will find highly relevant. * Anthropological Forum *Hearing Allah's Call is certainly an original, inspiring, and thought-provoking book and an important contribution to the study of Indonesia and the anthropology of Islam. It deserves a wide readership. * Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia *Currently, the nation with the most Muslims in the world is Indonesia, but it has drawn far less attention from scholars of Islam than it merits. Julian Millie's fascinating study of popular preaching is an invaluable contribution to this overlooked field. * The Journal of Religion *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Note on Transcription Introduction 1. Preaching Diversity in Bandung 2. The Unique Voice... and Its Travails 3. Preaching "without Performing" 4. The Languages of Preaching in the Islamic Public Sphere 5. The Listening Audience Laughs and Cries, the Writing Public Thinks 6. A Feminized Domain 7. Public Contest and the Pragmatics of Performance 8. Standing Up for Listening Conclusion Appendixes A. Wedding Sermon by Al-Jauhari B. Sunday Study Sermon by Shiddiq Amien C. Translation of Excerpt of Sermon by A. F. Ghazali Notes Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisIn this landmark account, Nur Amali Ibrahim paints a nuanced, detailed portrait of students seeking to reconcile some of the major social forces that inflect everyday life across the Muslim world—Islam, liberalism, radicalism, and secularism—as they strive to both find and define their place in a fast-changing, democratizing nation. Ibrahim demonstrates the critical importance of scholarly attention in both anthropology and religious studies to this vibrant country—the world’s largest Muslim nation.?Daromir Rudnyckyj, Associate Professor, University of Victoria, and author of the award-winning Spiritual EconomiesImprovisational Islam is about novel and unexpected ways of being Muslim, where religious dispositions are achieved through techniques that have little or no precedent in classical Islamic texts or concepts.Nur Amali Ibrahim foregrounds two distinct autodidactic university student organizations, each Trade ReviewSituated in the body of work on Islam in Indonesia, Nur Amali's approach in Improvisational Islam is refreshing. Nur Amali uses a strong anthropological research method, conducting in-depth interviews with youths, participant observation and lengthy field research. * SOJOURN - Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Introduction 1. The Tremblingness of Youths 2. Religion Unleashed 3. Accounting for the Soul 4. Playing with Scriptures 5. From Moderate Indonesia to Indonistan Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this landmark account, Nur Amali Ibrahim paints a nuanced, detailed portrait of students seeking to reconcile some of the major social forces that inflect everyday life across the Muslim world—Islam, liberalism, radicalism, and secularism—as they strive to both find and define their place in a fast-changing, democratizing nation. Ibrahim demonstrates the critical importance of scholarly attention in both anthropology and religious studies to this vibrant country—the world’s largest Muslim nation.?Daromir Rudnyckyj, Associate Professor, University of Victoria, and author of the award-winning Spiritual EconomiesImprovisational Islam is about novel and unexpected ways of being Muslim, where religious dispositions are achieved through techniques that have little or no precedent in classical Islamic texts or concepts.Nur Amali Ibrahim foregrounds two distinct autodidactic university student organizations, each Trade ReviewSituated in the body of work on Islam in Indonesia, Nur Amali's approach in Improvisational Islam is refreshing. Nur Amali uses a strong anthropological research method, conducting in-depth interviews with youths, participant observation and lengthy field research. * SOJOURN - Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Introduction 1. The Tremblingness of Youths 2. Religion Unleashed 3. Accounting for the Soul 4. Playing with Scriptures 5. From Moderate Indonesia to Indonistan Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMercenaries and Missionaries examines the relationship between rapidly diffusing forms of capitalism and Christianity in the Global South. Using more than two hundred interviews in Bangalore and Dubai, Brandon Vaidyanathan explains how and why global corporate professionals straddle conflicting moral orientations in the realms of work and religion. Seeking to place the spotlight on the role of religion in debates about the cultural consequences of capitalism, Vaidyanathan finds that an apprehensive individualism generated in global corporate workplaces is supported and sustained by a therapeutic individualism cultivated in evangelical-charismatic Catholicism.Mercenaries and Missionaries uncovers a symbiotic relationship between these individualisms and shows how this relationship unfolds in two global citiesDubai, in non-democratic UAE, which holds what is considered the world''s largest Catholic parish, and Bangalore, in democratic India, where the Catholic ChuTrade ReviewVaidyanathan's brilliant ethnography breaks ground in the study of capitalism in the Global South. * Choice *A fascinating portrait of a certain section of the transnational professional class. It provides an important and sensitive analysis of how such professionals, especially those from developing countries, struggle to integrate their Christian faith with their career ambitions. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *

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Book SynopsisThe Kosher Capones tells the fascinating story of Chicago''s Jewish gangsters from Prohibition into the 1980s. Author Joe Kraus traces these gangsters through the lives, criminal careers, and conflicts of Benjamin Zuckie the Bookie Zuckerman, last of the independent West Side Jewish bosses, and Lenny Patrick, eventual head of the Syndicate''s Jewish wing.These two men linked the early Jewish gangsters of the neighborhoods of Maxwell Street and Lawndale to the notorious Chicago Outfit that emerged from Al Capone''s criminal confederation. Focusing on the murder of Zuckerman by Patrick, Kraus introduces us to the different models of organized crime they represented, a raft of largely forgotten Jewish gangsters, and the changing nature of Chicago''s political corruption. Hard-to-believe anecdotes of corrupt politicians, seasoned killers, and in-over-their-heads criminal operators spotlight the magnitude and importance of Jewish gangsters to the story of Windy City mob rulTrade ReviewWhen the story moves forward in time, Kraus focuses on Lenny Patrick, "the central figure in Chicago Jewish organized crime," who eventually became a cooperating witness whose testimony took down the syndicate * Publisher's Weekly *Included are rich depictions of the families and lone actors involved, the rules they were expected to play by — and how those characters and motivations intertwined with political intrigue. * Southern Jewish Living *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Connecting the Dots 1. The End, or Zukie's Bad Day 2. Beyond Scarface, A Kosher Capone for Maxwell Street 3. The Sunset of 1974: Lenny Patrcik's Changing World 4. Landing in Lawndale 5. Rising in the Ranks 6. Roots of the Lawndale Machine 7. Arvey's Balancing Act 8. Syndicate Hammer 9. Sizing Up the Outfit 10. Tentacles 11. When Scarface Met Rico 12. Lenny's Circus Turn

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Book SynopsisCultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari''a Imamate (19131958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Omansuch as old mosques and shari''a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological siteshave saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman''s expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstraTrade ReviewParticularly compelling is the book's attention to the ways the shift from premodern forms of governance premised upon certain kinds of Islamic ethical practice and engagement with the divine are reworked through this transition, with consequences for the social, political, and material worlds premised on these relations. This book offers many important insights, making it an excellent contribution to the anthropologies of Islam and the Middle East, the history of the Arabian Gulf, and critical scholarly perspectives on material heritage practices. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Heritage Discourse and Its Alterities 1. Reform and Revolt through the Pen and the Sword 2. Nizwa Fort and the Dalla during the Imamate 3. Museum Effects 4. Ethics of History Making 5. Nizwa, City of Memories 6. Nizwa's Lasting Legacy of Slavery 7. The al-Lawati as a Historical Category Conclusion: Cultivating the Past

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Book SynopsisCultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari''a Imamate (19131958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Omansuch as old mosques and shari''a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological siteshave saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman''s expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstraTrade ReviewParticularly compelling is the book's attention to the ways the shift from premodern forms of governance premised upon certain kinds of Islamic ethical practice and engagement with the divine are reworked through this transition, with consequences for the social, political, and material worlds premised on these relations. This book offers many important insights, making it an excellent contribution to the anthropologies of Islam and the Middle East, the history of the Arabian Gulf, and critical scholarly perspectives on material heritage practices. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Heritage Discourse and Its Alterities 1. Reform and Revolt through the Pen and the Sword 2. Nizwa Fort and the Dalla during the Imamate 3. Museum Effects 4. Ethics of History Making 5. Nizwa, City of Memories 6. Nizwa's Lasting Legacy of Slavery 7. The al-Lawati as a Historical Category Conclusion: Cultivating the Past

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn an homage to a space and time that have passed, but that remain as traces in the vivid depictions on display in this handsome and informative volume, Moore offers a love letter to photographers who looked past ideological doctrine (worker strikes and political protests are set aside) to teach viewers and to remind themselves how to regard their fellow New Yorkers with the dignity of concerned attentiveness. * Gotham Center *A stunningly perceptive narrative of the subject of Jewish street photographers. * Bill Aron *Table of ContentsPrologue: Reframing New York 1. Toward a New York Document 2. Looking 3. Letting Go 4. Going Out 5. Waiting 6. Talking 7. Selling Epilogue: A New York Family Album

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Book SynopsisThe essays in Islamic Ecumene address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways. The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals. Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that i

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Book SynopsisWritten in pieces over the last fifteen years of his life and published posthumously, S. Y. Agnon's A City in Its Fullness is an ambitious, historically rich sequence of stories memorializing Buczacz, the city of his birth. This town in present-day Ukraine was once home to a vibrant Jewish population that was destroyed twice over—in the First World War and again in the Holocaust. Agnon's epic story cycle, however, focuses not on the particulars of destruction, but instead reimagines the daily lives of Buczacz's Jewish citizens, vividly preserving the vanished world of early modern Jewry. Ancestral Tales shows how this collection marks a critical juncture within the Agnon canon. Through close readings of the stories against a shifting historical backdrop, Alan Mintz presents a multilayered history of the town, along with insight into Agnon's fictional transformations. Mintz relates these narrative strategies to catastrophe literature from earlier periods of Jewish history, showing how Agnon's Buczacz is a literary achievement at once innovative in its form of remembrance and deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.Trade Review"This beautifully written book invites readers into Agnon's world, expanding our reading of Agnon's modernism with brilliant insights into his literary project, while conveying a vivid sense of the milieu and history of Buczacz. The result is both a crucial contribution to Agnon studies and a richly textured cultural history." -- Anne Golomb Hoffman * author of Between Exile and Return: S. Y. Agnon and the Drama of Writing *"This insightful, complex, and yet utterly accessible interpretation of the major stories that make up Agnon's unique history of Buczacz, Ancestral Tales will remain the key text for understanding Agnon's last endeavor and the universe contained within its covers. A tremendous accomplishment." -- Omer Bartov * author of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: "I Am Building a City" chapter abstractThe origins of the project of writing a cycle of stories about Buczacz are presented in the story "The Sign," in which an Agnon-like narrator experiences a mystical visitation by a Jewish medieval poet who models literary creation as a way to memorialize the destroyed city. Although many of the stories were published in the author's lifetime, scant attention was paid to them then or when they were published in book form. Israeli culture had a conflicted relationship to the Holocaust, and there was little interest in literature devoted to the Old World life that Zionism had sought to replace. There has been a significant change in attitude since that time, and A City in Its Fullness has recently become the object of increasing critical attention. 1A Baedeker to Buczacz chapter abstractThe opening story of A City in Its Fullness is a myth of origins that presents the founding of Buczacz as an arrested attempt on the part of fervent Jews from the Rhineland Valley to journey to the Land of Israel. This story is compared with the historical record, which describes an economic emigration of Jews from central Poland in the sixteenth century into lands in the southeast newly colonized by Polish nobles. The Jewish community of Buczacz rebuilt itself after the Khmelnytskyi massacres of 1648 and the Tatar and Turkish incursions that followed. The community experienced relative prosperity and stability as a town owned by the Potocki family. The first book of A City in Its Fullness is devoted to the town's principle places and institutions in the form of a grand tour conducted for the reader, with attention given to both Jewish and gentile space. 2Inventing a Narrator chapter abstractWriting stories set in a period beyond modern memory presented Agnon with the challenge of a workable narrative premise. For this task Agnon gave up the autobiographical narrator that had been the mainstay of his earlier fiction and developed a unique narrator—actually, a set of variations on a single premise—who speaks as a believing Jew within the historical milieu of the stories. The narrator's views are aligned with the contemporary rabbinic elite and, like the leaders of Buczacz, skeptical of mysticism and Hasidism. His tone assumes the authority of the communal minute book, the pinkas; yet although impersonal, and without a recognizable identity, he uses the "I" in a garrulous and compunctious manner. This chapter describes how the stories communicate simultaneously with the implied traditional audience contemporary to the events and the modern audience reading the stories as they appeared in Haaretz and similar news journals. 3Worship and Danger: A Cantorial Triptych chapter abstractAgnon examines azzanim, the cantors or professional prayer leaders in the synagogue, not as employees of the community but as embodying the ideal of prayer as a vocation. This construction draws upon the office of the high priest in the ancient Temple service, the sacred poet of the Middle Ages, and the romantic artist, whose self-sacrifice on the altar of his art renders him a martyr. Discussing three stories about azzanim—about a young woman with a gift for sacred music who must keep her gift hidden; a azzan whose determination to serve the community without pay brings about his gruesome martyrdom; and a gifted azzan who pays for his amour-propre earlier in life by having to recluse himself from the profession—this chapter examines the stories' tragic realization that leading the community in true prayer inevitably leads to the danger of too close proximity to the holy. 4Rabbis and Scholars chapter abstractThe major novella at the heart of A City in Its Fullness asks whether it is possible to combine two kinds of rabbinic leadership: the pure scholar and the community rabbi. Whether the source is the Polish magnate or the Austrian government official, government interference in appointments to rabbinic seats is a factor that few Jewish communities can elude. The novella concerns Buczacz's failed quest to find a rabbi who is equal in all respects to the community's high regard for its own learning and piety. Because of the ineluctability of gentile interference, the story concludes that true Torah scholarship can almost never be realized by a rabbi beholden to the community. 5Jews and Poles chapter abstractUntil 1772, Buczacz, like many Polish towns, was owned outright by a Polish noble, who was the source of all law. In the social space between the Catholic land-owning Poles and the Orthodox Ruthenian/Ukrainian serfs, the Jews operated as merchants, shopkeepers, and craftsmen. Although the services provided by the Jews were economically critical to the Poles, the latter despised the former and knew little of their inner religious life. Two major stories imagine a set of circumstances in which these roles are reversed and two great magnates become dependent for their lives on Jews, one a great communal leader and the other a humble charcoal maker. The chapter examines how Agnon uses established historical information to create alternative history and reimagine a "corrected" relationship between the two communities. 6Austrian Mandates chapter abstractThe Austrian rule over Buczacz that came with the partition of Poland in 1772 brought far-reaching changes to Jewish life, especially during the first decades of imperial rule. One change was the imposition of a special tax on the candles Jews used for Sabbaths, holidays, and weddings. Agnon's general approach is to examine the corrupting effects of these measures within the Jewish community rather than between the community and the Austrian authorities. One major story concerns a thug named Feivush, who serves as an enforcer for a heartless tax farmer. Feivush is feared and reviled by his fellow Jews, but then he himself becomes a victim. Other tales focus on the marginalization of rabbinic courts under the Austrians, which allows the violence of the wealthy to go unchecked. 7Disappeared chapter abstractOne of the most hated measures imposed by the Austrians was conscription into the imperial army for long periods of service. To meet the quotas, Jewish communities offered inducements to the vagrant poor and forcibly recruited youth who were insufficiently religious. The story "Disappeared" concerns a blameless apprentice tailor named Dan, who is delivered to the army by the Buczacz community to protect its better-born youth. The story focuses on the community's apathy to the suffering of Dan's mother and his secret fiancée, as well as the role of literacy and letter writing in this changing society. On his way back to Buczacz after years of service, Dan falls into the hands of a Polish noblewoman who keeps him captive for several years. The story's sensational conclusion, in the form of this woman's diary, describes her sexual attraction to the ex-soldier and her victimization of him. 8Moments of Redemption chapter abstractThe depiction of the Buczacz Jewish community under Austrian rule is so negative that it threatens the very enterprise of A City in Its Fullness as a memorial project. To counterbalance this, at the end of the volume, Agnon explores redemption as both a theological and social construct. He locates the potential for redemption not within the rabbinic elite or communal leadership, but within the love of learning on the part of ordinary householders. In a story called "In a Single Moment," the unmarried status of an outstanding fifteen-year-old scholar is of great concern to his parents. During the climactic conclusion of the events of a single day, the boy weds a young woman who has been left under the uppah by an unscrupulously materialistic bridegroom. The joy that suddenly floods the community provides a moment of redemption, a brief but significant recoupment of the community's spiritual glory. Epilogue chapter abstractA City in Its Fullness represents an extraordinary instance of a major writer returning to the golden age of East European Jewry and reimagining it through the medium of modernist fiction. Although the stories are carefully set within the facts of their historical periods, Agnon sometimes arrogates to himself the freedom to "correct" the historical record by fashioning stories that accord to their Jewish subjects the dignity they deserved in their own time but did not receive.

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Book SynopsisThe city of Jaffa presents a paradox: intimate neighbors who are political foes. The official Jewish national tale proceeds from exile to redemption and nation-building, while the Palestinians' is one of a golden age cut short, followed by dispossession and resistance. The experiences of Jaffa's Jewish and Arab residents, however, reveal lives and nationalist sentiments far more complex. Twilight Nationalism shares the stories of ten of the city's elders—women and men, rich and poor, Muslims, Jews, and Christians—to radically deconstruct these national myths and challenge common understandings of belonging and alienation. Through the stories told at life's end, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan illuminate how national affiliation ultimately gives way to existential circumstances. Similarities in lives prove to be shaped far more by socioeconomic class, age, and gender than national allegiance, and intersections between stories usher in a politics of existence in place of politics of identity. In offering the real stories individuals tell about themselves, this book reveals shared perspectives too long silenced and new understandings of local community previously lost in nationalist narratives.Trade Review"In Twilight Nationalism, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan go far beyond standard narratives about Jaffa, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians have long shared the city. The authors break through the thicket of established notions and give us an alternative description. And they do so brilliantly."—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of Expulsions"Twilight Nationalism gives voice to ten elderly Palestinian survivors and Jewish immigrants from Jaffa who narrate and, indeed, analyze, how the burden of history and the tyranny of the nation fragmented the rhythms of their lives. Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan produced a multivocal elegy that is as profound as it is imaginative and nothing short of brilliant."—Gershon Shafir, University of California, San Diego, author of A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World's Most Intractable Conflict"This groundbreaking book exposes the hidden gems of a binational city, that even indigenous Jaffans like myself tend to overlook."—Moussa Abou-Ramadan, University of Strasbourg, coauthor of Treatise of Comparative Islamic Law"InTwilight Nationalism: Politics of Existence at Life's End,authors Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan offer an original and thought-provoking ethnographic study of nationalist identity in the "mixed" city of Jaffa...[W]hat their analysis does amply and sensitively show is the value of a relational and situational approach to the study of nationalist identities and discourses, and the importance of being attentive to different social, spatial, and temporal configurations in analyses of their import upon everyday lives."––Una McGahern, H-Nationalism"One of the strengths of this ethnography is the intimate humanity of the individuals who appear in it...Together, the historical breadth and personal depth of the life histories narrated in this book could offer rich teaching material for students interested in old age, memory, the intersection of identity, politics, and gender, the false dichotomy of collaboration versus resistance, and mixed cities in Israel/ Palestine."––Basma Fahoum, Review of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Toward Twilight Nationalism 1. Besieged Nationalism: Fakhri Jday and the Decline of the Elites 2. Worn-Out Nationalism: Rabbi Avraham Bachar and the Community's Betrayal 3. Surviving Nationalism: Isma'il abu-Shehade and Testimony amid the Ruins 4. Circumventing Nationalism: The Hakim Sisters and the Cosmopolitan Experience 5. Domesticated Nationalism: Nazihah Asis, a Prisoner of Zion 6. Dissolved Nationalism: Subhiya abu-Ramadan and the Critique of the Patriarchal Order 7. Overlooking Nationalism: Talia Seckbach-Monterescu In and Out of Place 8. Suspended Nationalism: Moshe (Mussa) Hermosa and Jewish-Arab Masculinity 9. Masking Nationalism: Amram Ben-Yosef on a Tightrope 10. Speechless Nationalism: Abu-George on the Edge Conclusion: From Identity Politics to Politics of Existence Epilogue: Earth to Earth: Posthumous Nationalism

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Book SynopsisAt the turn of the twentieth century, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death across America, Europe, and the Russian Empire. The incurable disease gave rise to a culture of convalescence, creating new opportunities for travel and literary reflection. Tubercular Capital tells the story of Yiddish and Hebrew writers whose lives and work were transformed by a tubercular diagnosis. Moving from eastern Europe to the Italian Peninsula, and from Mandate Palestine to the Rocky Mountains, Sunny S. Yudkoff follows writers including Sholem Aleichem, Raḥel Bluvshtein, David Vogel, and others as they sought "the cure" and drew on their experiences of illness to hone their literary craft. Combining archival research with literary analysis, Yudkoff uncovers how tuberculosis came to function as an agent of modern Jewish literature. The illness would provide the means for these suffering writers to grow their reputations and find financial backing. It served a central role in the public fashioning of their literary personas and ushered Jewish writers into a variety of intersecting English, German, and Russian literary traditions. Tracing the paths of these writers, Tubercular Capital reconsiders the foundational relationship between disease, biography, and literature.Trade Review"This brilliant study combines thorough historical research with a fine-grained analysis of texts produced under the shadow of the 'White Death,' all framed by a powerful account of the cultural and economic matrix within which both the career of the individual poet and the tradition of tubercular writing are most fruitfully articulated." -- Ernest B. Gilman * New York University *"Resisting the sentimental transformation of illness into metaphor described by Susan Sontag, while attending to the persistently romanticized 'consumptive artist,' Sunny Yudkoff's brilliant study provides a new model for understanding the relationship between literary creativity and tuberculosis. Tubercular Capital argues that writers strategically mobilized their tuberculosis, both for their careers and in their work, even as they were laid low by disease. From Sholem Aleichem's 'tubercular Jubilee' to the sickrooms and sanatoria of other Hebrew and Yiddish writers, tuberculosis was inextricable from the burgeoning of early twentieth-century Hebrew and Yiddish literary culture." -- Naomi Seidman * University of Toronto *"Yudkoff's exploration seamlessly merges speculation with concrete history....Tempting as it may be to imbue illness with its own transcendental power, she chooses to depict its force with a more material and pragmatic truth, warning of the dangerous contortions of pain that come with romanticization." -- Arshy Azizi * Los Angeles Review of Books *"This research on the role that tuberculosis played in the lives and creative output of modern Jewish writers is original and fascinating....Highly recommended for academic libraries collecting in the area of Jewish culture and literature." -- Yaffa Weisman * Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter *"A major asset of [Tubercular Capital] is the fact that it retains an unromanticized view of suffering artists, which is even more important when examining their treasured poetic work." -- Heidi Stern * The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Jewish Literature and Tubercular Capital chapter abstractThe Introduction sets the stage for a larger investigation into the intersection of tuberculosis, biography, and literary output. To do so, the Introduction offers an account of the state of Yiddish and Hebrew literature at the turn of the twentieth century as well as an overview of various cultural-historical connotations of tuberculosis among Jewish and non-Jewish readers. This includes an examination of Romantic notions about consumption, anti-Semitic discourses surrounding tuberculosis, and the reputation of the disease among Zionists, communists, and Jewish public health officials across the globe. The Introduction further introduces the methodological intervention of the study—tubercular capital—by bringing together sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "cultural capital" with anthropologist Didier Fassin's investigations into the "politics of life." 1In the Hands of Every Reader: Sholem Aleichem's Tubercular Jubilee chapter abstractThis chapter examines the role played by disease in the life and career of the classic Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (né Sholem Rabinovitsh). After being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1908, a global campaign known as "The Jubilee" was initiated to help the destitute author recuperate in Nervi, Italy. Drawing on archival sources, newspaper articles, and multiple memoirs, this chapter plots how the campaign promoted the author's reputation, stabilized his finances, and inaugurated the first formal stage of literary-critical assessments of his work. It further analyzes the importance of tuberculosis in Sholem Aleichem's literary output, in the development of his literary persona, and in the establishment of a mutually-effective relationship with his readership. 2In a Sickroom of Her Own: Raḥel Bluvshtein's Tubercular Poetry chapter abstractThis chapter examines the role of tuberculosis in the life and writing of the Hebrew poet known as Raḥel. To do so, the chapter draws on the comparative model of the Victorian sickroom to examine how Raḥel transformed the space of her recuperation into a veritable salon of literary exchange and creativity. Reading Raḥel's correspondence and poetry and drawing on the memoiristic accounts published by her visitors, this chapter reveals that Raḥel's Tel Aviv sickroom became the center of her public self-fashioning as an ailing female poet. The sickroom further serves as the key for interpreting the link between Raḥel's poetics of space, simplicity (pashtut), and the spread (hitpashtut) of disease. This chapter also sharpens scholarly understanding of Raḥel's literary biography by situating her work within an Eastern European Romantic tradition of writing about consumption that stands in tension with contemporaneous Zionist ideas concerning illness. 3In the Kingdom of Fever: The Writers of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the literary scene of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS), a Coloradan sanatorium for indigent Jews. There, a cohort of Yiddish tubercular writers engaged in a reciprocal relationship with the institution, becoming the public faces of the sanatorium and, in turn, being offered new venues to see their work published and translated. These writers include the lyric poet and Bible translator Yehoash, the epic poet H. Leivick, and the prose stylist Shea Tenenbaum. Drawing on archival records, newspaper reports, and memoirs, the chapter further explores how the JCRS supported the establishment of a tubercular American Yiddish literary tradition. 4In the Sanatorium: David Vogel Between Hebrew and German chapter abstractThis chapter examines the role played by tuberculosis in the life and writing of the Hebrew modernist David Vogel. After taking the cure in Merano, Italy in the winters of 1925 and 1926, he published his first novella, Be-vet ha-marpe (In the Sanatorium) in 1927. The text draws heavily on the tropes and concerns of German-language sanatorium fiction, including works by Arthur Schnitzler, Klabund, and Thomas Mann. Specifically, this chapter argues that Vogel writes his account of the sanatorium in a tense intertextual exchange with Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924). Vogel challenges the possibility of a Hebrew-German literary conversation through a series of interlingual puns, wordplays, and jokes about tuberculosis. Illness emerges in this chapter as the hermeneutic key to Vogel's modernism. Epilogue: After the Cure chapter abstractThis chapter explores post-Holocaust iterations of tuberculosis and sanatoria in the work of the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld. Although he did not suffer from tuberculosis, Appelfeld frequently turns to the disease and its institutions, such as in his 1975 novella, Badenheim, 'ir nofesh (English: Badenheim 1939). Bringing his work into dialogue with the texts of the tubercular writers of the pre-WWII period, this chapter demonstrates the continued relevance of tubercular capital as a methodological prism and analytic category, even after a diagnosis of tuberculosis was no longer commonplace among modern Jewish writers.

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Book SynopsisThe production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural, and spatial policies. With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites' project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars shows how the Saudi state's response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history, and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation.Trade Review"There are now two distinct eras in the writing of Saudi Arabian history: before Rosie Bsheer's Archive Wars and after." -- Robert Vitalis * University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft *"Archive Wars explores with conceptual brilliance and historical aplomb the various forms of historical erasure central not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but to all modern states. In a finely-grained analysis, Rosie Bsheer rethinks the significance of archives, historicism, capital accumulation, and the remaking of the built environment. A must-read for all historians concerned with the materiality of modern state formation." -- Omnia El Shakry * University of California, Davis, author of The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt *"Archive Wars is an instant classic. With incredible insight, creativity, and courage, Rosie Bsheer peels away the political and institutional barriers that have so long mystified others seeking to understand Saudi Arabia. Bsheer tells us remarkable new things about the exercise and meaning of power in today's Saudi Arabia." -- Toby Jones * Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia *"Rosie Bsheer's Archive Wars is one of those extraordinary projects that explodes fictions of so many kinds about archives and state power. This masterful and meticulous book is testimony to the visceral violences that underwrite legal and archival mandates, the bedrock of the massive inequalities that plague our collective worlds now more than ever. Bsheer offers us a reading of the wars that rage in—and over—modern archives, showing that they are not modern because they are unmarred by the destruction of records, but because they are constituted by ever bolder techniques of erasure." -- Ann Stoler * The New School for Social Research, author of Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times *"Archive Wars is a much-needed and in many ways revelatory addition to our understanding of Saudi history and politics. On a personal level, I found the work to be an absolute delight to read and one that has challenged the way I look at Saudi politics. Despite being a vital country in the Middle East, there are few good texts on the kingdom. Archive Wars will stimulate better and more critical scholarship. It changes the way we think about the relationship between archives, heritage, and political power in the region, and beyond." -- Middle East Monitor"[A] must-read for anybody interested in modern Saudi Arabia. Whether you are looking for insights into the ambitions of kings or into the lives of ordinary people, it is essential to know how historical information is kept and erased. Beyond that, I recommend Bsheer's work to anybody studying the creation of archives and heritage elsewhere in the Middle East and globally." -- Jörg Matthias Determann * Journal of Social History *"By dissecting competing and complicated relationships between and among the Saudi state and elites, Bsheer presents a compelling portrait of the state's forceful consolidation of an acceptable historical narrative, showcasing the Saudi state's attempts to elide any historical documents or physical traces that do not corroborate the sanctioned story of the rise of Al Saud... [T]he book's depictions of urban transformations are essential for understanding the nature of power in Saudi Arabia today." -- Kathryn King * Journal of Arabian Studies *"This book is an intelligent, subtle, and learned treatment of the efforts by the Saudi Arabian monarchy to construct and disseminate a historical narrative that will legitimize its rule. Bsheer precisely and elegantly describes the regime's attempts, across the reigns of several kings, to both collect and suppress documentation about the country's past." -- Lisa Anderson * Foreign Affairs *"We find in Rosie Bsheer's book a skillful combination of topics and a stimulating engagement with the politics of history. Archive Wars deserves close reading, especially as it engages with a notoriously challenging country to frame, thanks to the author's unique access to the kingdom, her use of Saudi academic scholarship, and the books theoretical intervention in the political science of the Middle East and North Africa." -- Idriss Jebari * Canadian Journal of History *"This book substantially reworks existing knowledge of Saudi Arabia—the making of the state, the legitimization of its power, and the centrality of diverse history-making projects in these projects. Drawing on rich ethnographic and archival work, the author convincingly argues that the ruling regime has been engaged in a project of re-writing Saudi history since the 1990s. Central to these history-making projects has been the 'archive wars' and efforts to centralize archival sources, as well as re-making the built environment through urban planning and development.Sophisticated and engaging and politically bold." -- Committee for the Nikki Keddie Book Award * sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association *"Rosie Bsheer'sArchive Warsis a forceful and inspiring reminder of what superb and unflinching scholarship and writing can do. Based on exciting fieldwork,Archive Wars examines the erasing and building of history in Saudi Arabia. It is one of those rare books that focuses our attention – without hesitation – on the broader stakes and processes of modern state formation while detailing the contingencies and tensions of power. It exposes with clarity and precision links between political-economy, state power, and the materiality of documents and the built environment. Attempts to erase and rewrite the past in Saudi Arabia will have to contend with Rosie Bsheer's archive.—Committee for the AGAPS Biennial Book AwardTable of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Archive Question chapter abstractIn the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, ruling elites in Saudi Arabia adopted measures that aimed to reconfigure state power by pacifying wartime popular opposition, reshaping the politics of subject formation, and diversifying the petroleum economy. The ensuing struggle over state form—what I call archive wars—revolved around the production of history, the reordering of space, and the repurposing of valuable real estate. Historicizing these practices helps us rethink the nature of modern archival formation as well as statecraft while calling into question scholarly assumptions about the cohesiveness of authoritarian states, and of states in general. Approaching the domains of history making and urban planning as mutually constitutive, contested, and ongoing material practices of state formation complicates conventional understandings of the nature of state power and its imbrication with archive formation. 1Occluded Pasts chapter abstractThis chapter takes up one strand of sociopolitical and cultural life in late Ottoman Mecca: the school of Indian religious scholar Muhammad Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi and its relation to the emergence of an intellectually engaged Hijazi middle class during the nahda. The chapter then attends to how the Saudi state occluded and repackaged this history since 1932. Beyond the symbolic power it bestowed upon its rulers, Mecca was a space where intellectual debate flourished, honing the minds of thinkers who became central figures in twentieth-century politics and religion. Yet Mecca's past is absent from histories of the Hijaz and of Saudi Arabia and from histories of intellectual thought, cultural production, and political activism in the late Ottoman period. Unearthing these transregional histories is urgent because the Saudi state has been destroying the city's built environment in lockstep with the logic of historical erasure and state formation. 2A State With No Archive chapter abstractIn 1966, at the height of the struggle between reactionary and progressive forces that pitted Al Saud against Gamal Abdel Nasser and progressive forces inside Saudi Arabia, King Faisal passed the country's first archiving law. The aim was to choreograph a sanitized version of history and to reify elites' political, territorial, economic, and cultural claims. This chapter connects the beginning of archival praxis in Cold War Arabia to the necessity of managing elite power rivalries and fending off threats from regional rivals and domestic political movements. These anxieties shaped archival praxis and subsequently institutionalized a culture of secrecy and rivalry across the bureaucracy, with the push and pull of the archival operation mirroring the rivalries endemic to the Saudi state. Tracing the battles to produce an archive from the mid-1960s until the late 1980s shows how Saudi Arabia complicates conventional thinking about archives and about the authoritarian state itself. 3Assembling History chapter abstractIn the 1990s, Saudi Arabia's top rulers sought to shift the grounds for political legitimation, subject formation, and economic diversification to maintain power following the Gulf War. This required the production of primary source materials for a revised, secular official history, the repositories that would house them, and the spaces that would monumentalize such a discourse. The Darah, along with the Ariyyadh Development Authority, assembled the past and its spaces in Riyadh. With the backing of Salman, who was Riyadh's governor at the time, the low-grade archive fever of the 1970s got a second lease on life. Like Faisal before him, Salman faced challenges to centralizing the archive: from members of the ruling family, politicians and bureaucrats, activists and archivists. Institutional acts of history making and placing put into question the coherence of historical narration and memorialization, and expose archival anxieties and rivalries among the architects of state building. 4Heritage as War chapter abstractIn the aftermath of the Gulf War, an army of urban planners, economists, historians, archeologists, and tourism consultants descended upon Riyadh. Under the aegis of the High Commission for the Development of Arriyadh, they brainstormed ideas for the redevelopment of the capital city, with an eye to the economic, political, and social challenges that the country was facing in the late twentieth century. The Arriyadh Development Authority oversaw the production of a regulatory planning document that would transform Riyadh into the administrative, cultural, economic, touristic, and historical center of Saudi Arabia. This chapter examines the production and destruction of historical sites since the 1950s. It shows how the 1990s saw the acceleration of the remaking of historical areas in Riyadh and the creation of a productive heritage industry therein. Memorialization came to constitute a key node in the postwar architectural reformulation of the state. 5Bulldozing the Past chapter abstractSince the early 2000s, the Saudi state summarily dynamited whole mountains around the Grand Mosque, destroying much of Islam's material history and replacing it with commercial megaprojects. The deliberate demolition of historical and religious sites in Mecca starkly contrasts with the preservation of more recent and dilapidated sites associated with Al Saud's heritage in Riyadh. In post–Gulf War Saudi Arabia, Mecca came to serve a different legitimating purpose, one rooted in grandiose infrastructural projects and aesthetics, wherein secular time overwhelmed religious temporality and subjectivity. The regime used Wahhabi iconoclasm and the need to modernize the hajj to justify such destruction. This chapter shows how the city's urban "renewal" was inextricable from archival formation and urban planning in Riyadh. The neoliberal city was at the heart of the twinned postwar process of real estate and heritage development, with Al Saud and the Binladin family reaping billions off its redevelopment. Conclusion: The Violence of History chapter abstractThis chapter centers on how Saudi rulers instrumentalized religion to pacify post–Gulf War popular contestation and shifted the basis of state legitimation to secular historical memorialization, political commemoration, and urban redevelopment. Using these material practices, it shows how statecraft, even in authoritarian regimes, evolves diachronically in response to a multiplicity of challenges, not least of which is popular opposition. The postwar project, however, was transformed at different critical junctures: the terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia in the 2000s, the Arab Uprisings, and the ascension of the postwar project's architect, Salman ibn Abdulaziz, to the throne in 2015. With Salman in power, the archival landscape, both institutional and spatial, has for the most part succumbed to his decades-long national vision. Cultural and urban redevelopment reflects the material culture and built environment of Salman's Saudi Arabia, which enshrined his view of the past, present, and future.

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Book SynopsisThe city of Jaffa presents a paradox: intimate neighbors who are political foes. The official Jewish national tale proceeds from exile to redemption and nation-building, while the Palestinians' is one of a golden age cut short, followed by dispossession and resistance. The experiences of Jaffa's Jewish and Arab residents, however, reveal lives and nationalist sentiments far more complex. Twilight Nationalism shares the stories of ten of the city's elders—women and men, rich and poor, Muslims, Jews, and Christians—to radically deconstruct these national myths and challenge common understandings of belonging and alienation. Through the stories told at life's end, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan illuminate how national affiliation ultimately gives way to existential circumstances. Similarities in lives prove to be shaped far more by socioeconomic class, age, and gender than national allegiance, and intersections between stories usher in a politics of existence in place of politics of identity. In offering the real stories individuals tell about themselves, this book reveals shared perspectives too long silenced and new understandings of local community previously lost in nationalist narratives.Trade Review"In Twilight Nationalism, Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan go far beyond standard narratives about Jaffa, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians have long shared the city. The authors break through the thicket of established notions and give us an alternative description. And they do so brilliantly."—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of Expulsions"Twilight Nationalism gives voice to ten elderly Palestinian survivors and Jewish immigrants from Jaffa who narrate and, indeed, analyze, how the burden of history and the tyranny of the nation fragmented the rhythms of their lives. Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan produced a multivocal elegy that is as profound as it is imaginative and nothing short of brilliant."—Gershon Shafir, University of California, San Diego, author of A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World's Most Intractable Conflict"This groundbreaking book exposes the hidden gems of a binational city, that even indigenous Jaffans like myself tend to overlook."—Moussa Abou-Ramadan, University of Strasbourg, coauthor of Treatise of Comparative Islamic Law"InTwilight Nationalism: Politics of Existence at Life's End,authors Daniel Monterescu and Haim Hazan offer an original and thought-provoking ethnographic study of nationalist identity in the "mixed" city of Jaffa...[W]hat their analysis does amply and sensitively show is the value of a relational and situational approach to the study of nationalist identities and discourses, and the importance of being attentive to different social, spatial, and temporal configurations in analyses of their import upon everyday lives."––Una McGahern, H-Nationalism"One of the strengths of this ethnography is the intimate humanity of the individuals who appear in it...Together, the historical breadth and personal depth of the life histories narrated in this book could offer rich teaching material for students interested in old age, memory, the intersection of identity, politics, and gender, the false dichotomy of collaboration versus resistance, and mixed cities in Israel/ Palestine."––Basma Fahoum, Review of Middle East StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Toward Twilight Nationalism 1. Besieged Nationalism: Fakhri Jday and the Decline of the Elites 2. Worn-Out Nationalism: Rabbi Avraham Bachar and the Community's Betrayal 3. Surviving Nationalism: Isma'il abu-Shehade and Testimony amid the Ruins 4. Circumventing Nationalism: The Hakim Sisters and the Cosmopolitan Experience 5. Domesticated Nationalism: Nazihah Asis, a Prisoner of Zion 6. Dissolved Nationalism: Subhiya abu-Ramadan and the Critique of the Patriarchal Order 7. Overlooking Nationalism: Talia Seckbach-Monterescu In and Out of Place 8. Suspended Nationalism: Moshe (Mussa) Hermosa and Jewish-Arab Masculinity 9. Masking Nationalism: Amram Ben-Yosef on a Tightrope 10. Speechless Nationalism: Abu-George on the Edge Conclusion: From Identity Politics to Politics of Existence Epilogue: Earth to Earth: Posthumous Nationalism

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Book SynopsisFor over a thousand years, Muslim scholars worked to ensure that Islamic law was always fresh and vibrant, that it responded to the needs of an evolving Muslim community and served as a moral and spiritual compass. They did this by "hacking" Islamic law in accordance with changing times and contexts, diving into the interconnected Islamic legal tradition to recalibrate what was outdated, making some laws work better and more efficiently while leaving others undisturbed. These hacking skills made Islamic law both flexible and relevant so that it could meet the needs of a community with changing values while remaining true to its ancient roots. Today, the hacking process has stalled in the face of unprecedented structural challenges, and Islamic law has stagnated. This book is designed to revitalize the hacking tradition by getting readers involved in the process. It walks them through the ins and outs of Islamic legal change, vividly describing how Muslim scholars have met new and evolving challenges on topics as diverse as abolition, democracy, finance, gender, human rights, sexuality, and more. And it provides step-by-step instructions for readers to hack laws for themselves, so that through their engagement and creativity, they can help Islamic law regain its intrinsic vitality and resume its role as a forward-looking source for good in the world.Trade Review"In this original and thought-provoking book, Rumee Ahmed shows how law and practice can interact to shape as well as reflect a community's collective wisdom. He tackles with authority a highly complex and contested set of concepts in Islamic law, making them highly accessible."—Ziba Mir-Hosseini, University of London"A superb introduction to changing and reforming Islamic law from within the tradition."—Ziauddin Sardar, author of Mecca: The Sacred City and Editor of Critical Muslim"This book is a must-read for believers as well as researchers—those tired of being apologists, those who have exhausted the dull repertoire of arguments that Islam is a religion of peace, and those facing an onslaught of hatred, discrimination, and misrepresentation. Rumee Ahmed honors a timeless faith, a Holy Book, a wise Prophet, and generations of enlightened acolytes who do not defend the faith as much as they uphold its very tenets."—Azza Karam, UN Population Fund and UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Development"A creative and accessible exploration of Islamic law and tradition. I learned a lot from this book." —Eboo Patel, Founder and President of the Interfaith Youth Core, and author of Acts of Faith and Interfaith Leadership"Nothing is trickier than convincing believers that religious law evolves—and that they should try to shape its evolution. Sharia Compliant takes on this task with verve and optimism...by busting myths and urging development the book makes a meaningful contribution to contemporary Islamic thought and politics." —Noah R. Feldman, Harvard Law School and author of The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State"In this superbly written work, Rumee Ahmed skillfully turns complex notions into accessible ideas. He shows the reader how to independently connect classical Islamic law with the challenges of contemporary life, using real-life examples. This book is for the scholar, activist, and lay person alike. It achieves the difficult task of democratizing the production of Islamic legal knowledge today by making it possible for all to participate in its creation. A considerable and much-needed feat!"—Marwa Sharafeldin, Musawah: Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family"In a book aimed mainly at fellow Muslims, Ahmed (Univ. of British Columbia, Canada) suggests that more efficient solutions can recapture the ability of Islamic law to adapt to contemporary needs. He speaks of patching (accommodating) and hacking (revising) as vehicles through which temporary and long-lasting applications can be made to a variety of domestic, commercial, and criminal proceedings....Recommended."—L. Rosen, CHOICE"Ahmed's in-depth book demonstrates how flexible Islamic law can be as it evolves to tackle the issues of 21st century life and will appeal to lay readers interested in the textual origins of popularly held beliefs about the Koran."—Publisher's Weekly"Rumee offers us hope that change is not only feasible in Islamic law but is integral to it, as that is how it has survived through centuries of Muslim communities in all times, places and context....I am grateful for his book."—Junaid Jahangir, Maydan"Rumee Ahmed has provided a spirited, accessible (and no doubt in some corners controversial) handbook for harmonizing proposed ethical and moral components in the Islamic tradition. The book should be required reading for those who want to understand how modern thinkers in Islamic law grapple with legitimacy, tradition, and a changing world."—Ian M. Hartshorn, Terrorism and Political Violence

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Book SynopsisAt once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations within Zionist and Israeli culture. In the Judaic textual tradition, it evokes exile and punishment, yet is also a site for origin myths, the divine presence, and sanctity. Secular Zionism developed its own spin on the duality of the desert as the romantic site of Jews' biblical roots that inspired the Hebrew culture, and as the barren land outside the Jewish settlements in Palestine, featuring them as an oasis of order and technological progress within a symbolic desert. Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement and security concerns, environmental sympathies, and the commodifying tourist gaze. Drawing on literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons, Zerubavel reveals the complexities and contradictions that mark Israeli society's semiotics of space in relation to the Middle East, and the central role of the "besieged island" trope in Israeli culture and politics.Trade Review"Written with passion, innovation, and clarity, Desert in the Promised Land makes an original and significant contribution towards understanding the deeper currents of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By analyzing the role of the desert in Zionist ideology and the collective identity of Israel, Zerubavel adds new dimensions to her groundbreaking and acclaimed study of Israeli myths and memory, Recovered Roots." -- Tom Segev * author of 1949: The First Israelis *"In Desert in the Promised Land, space and memory, desert and settlement, are interwoven into a complex and fascinating portrait of Israel. Yael Zerubavel has written an engaging book that combines anthropology, culture, and history." -- Anita Shapira * author of Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel *"Yael Zerubavel has produced an important, original study of the multiple meanings of the desert in Zionist and Israeli culture. Ranging from the early twentieth century to the present, Zerubavel brings together a vast array of sources, which she reads with deep insight and describes in graceful prose." -- Derek J. Penslar * author of Jews and the Military: A History *"In a rewarding but not easy read, Zerubavel analyzes the complex meanings and varied perceptions of this desert for Jews before 1948 and for Israelis thereafter. She organizes her analysis as a metaphysical yet also a chronological journey through the symbolic desert landscape of space and meaning. The text moves from the ancient biblical story of divine revelations and of national birth of the Jewish people to the more recent tension between the themes of desert and settlement as opposing symbolic landscapes. Recommended." -- B. Harris Jr. * CHOICE *"Desert in the Promised Land is not an academic exercise in abstract distinctions, but a 'metaphorical journey' through the collective Jewish Israeli imaginary drawing from literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons. Recommended to all academic libraries." -- Roger S. Kohn * Association of Jewish Libraries *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: chapter abstractThe introduction sets the stage for exploring the divergent meanings of the desert as a symbolic landscape within the "spatial code" that Hebrew, and later Israeli, culture developed. Hebrew culture foregrounded the settlement as the key to Jewish national revival and relegated the desert to the background. This study reverses this relation, placing the desert at the center and setting out to examine the ambiguities underlying desert-settlement relations. The introduction presents the historical and thematic framework of the book. The first part addresses the duality of the symbolic desert in the Hebrew culture of late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine. The second part focuses on post-1948 Israel and the concrete Negev desert that is now included in its territory, examining the construction of the desert within the discourses and practices of settlement, environmentalism, and tourism, thus revealing the diverse visions of the desert in Israeli culture. 1Desert as Historical Metaphor chapter abstractThis chapter explores the dual meaning of the desert as a chronotope that links space and memory. The desert plays a critical role in the biblical exodus, as the "nonplace" set between Egypt, the land of exile, on the one hand, and the Promised Land, on the other, and the desert is hence the site of divine revelations and profound transitions that shaped the Israelites' collective identity. Jewish memory views the desert as representing the period of Jewish exile that led to the destruction of the homeland. Jewish tradition interprets exile as a divine punishment and Zionism constructed it as a regressive period within its decline narrative. References to the landscape outside Jewish settlements as a desolate "desert" and a "wasteland" underscored the redemptive mission of the Zionist settlement. The discussion addresses the tension between these interpretations and the use of the desert as a symbolic category. 2The Desert Mystique chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on European Jewish immigrants' fascination with the desert mystique. The desert appealed to European Zionist Jews as the mythical site of origins that preserved their ancient heritage. Orientalist images of the desert as resistant to modernity and change further reinforced the mythical view of the desert and its Bedouin inhabitants, but also Yemenite Jews, as inspiration for the construction of a modern Hebrew culture and identity. A nostalgic longing for the ancient past led some Zionist settlers and Hebrew youth to selectively adapt cultural idioms from Palestinian Arabs and generated the hybrid "Hebrew Bedouin" identity and a Hebrew desert lore. Other Zionist immigrants warned against the impact of the East on the Hebrew culture. The competing attitudes to the East reveal the Zionist Jewish settlers' ambivalence, as exiles returning to their homeland with conflicting ideas of separateness and belonging to the Middle East. 3Desert as the Counter-Place chapter abstractThis chapter explores settlement discourse and its competing interpretation of the desert as the counter-place. Early Zionist settlement narratives allude to wide-ranging terrains such as sands, swamps, barren mountains, and arid land as aspects of a hostile and chaotic "desert" while presenting the Jewish settlement as an "oasis" or "island" of order, modernity, and progress. The gendering of landscapes, the veneration of technology, and the use of war rhetoric enhance the achievements of the Jewish settlement in transforming its environment, and these ideas have been articulated in literature, songs, and art. The discussion addresses the influence of prevalent Western colonialist and modernist ideas and land-reclamation practices on the discourse and practices of Zionist settlement. As the national conflict in Palestine flared up in the 1930s, the discourses of settlement and security became intertwined and played a more prominent rolein shaping the view of the desert-settlement relations. 4The Negev Frontier chapter abstractAfter the 1948 war, the new state of Israel included the large and arid Negev region, and the discussion shifts from the symbolic desert outside the Jewish settlement to a concrete desert that has become an internal Jewish frontier. Although Prime Minister Ben-Gurion championed the goal of "making the desert bloom" and the state transferred water to the Negev, the limited response by established Israeli Jews led to the forced settlement of new immigrants in the desert in the 1950s and 1960s. These rural settlements and development towns faced major hardships, and the post-1967 Jewish drive to settle the occupied territories further blurred the Negev's status as a frontier and a periphery. Even with large areas of the Negev designated as national parks, nature reserves, and military bases, the call for new Jewish settlements continued, leading to experimental forms that diversified the Negev's Jewish population. 5The Negev Bedouins chapter abstractThe Negev's Bedouin population, greatly diminished after 1948, is the focus of this chapter. The state relocated most Negev Bedouins to the enclosed Siyag area, where they remained under military administration until 1966. Since then it has pursued an urbanization plan for the fast-growing Bedouin population in designated "Bedouin towns," yet a significant number of Bedouins refuse to settle their land claims, preferring to remain in their unrecognized rural villages. The government regards the so-called "Bedouin dispersion" as the embodiment of a chaotic and subversive counter-place while it promotes Jewish settlements in the Negev. Residents of the unrecognized villages live in the gray zone of a semi-permanent temporary state. The Bedouins' growing alienation, the rise of crime in the Negev, and harsh measures by law enforcement contribute to the perception of the Negev as the Wild South. 6Unsettled Landscapes chapter abstractThis chapter examines the environmental discourse and its revisionist view of desert-settlement relations. The environmental lobby acknowledges the desert-settlement opposition but reinterprets its meaning: the desert represents nature and the open space that must be protected from an overly aggressive settlement drive and development projects, and from its perception as a "national dump" for undesired, discredited, and dangerous human and material elements. Most of the desert is designated for nature reserves, national parks, and military bases. The environmentalists employ salvage rhetoric and the legal recourse to defend the desert environment from settlement development and industrial projects, while some proponents of the settlement agenda attack their position as anti-Zionist. The discussion highlights the contested visions of the desert and the fluidity of the coalitions formed between the state, local authorities, the army, the industry, tourism, and the environmental lobby in different cases. 7The Desert and the Tourist Gaze chapter abstractThis chapter examines the discourse and practices of tourism, which offer multiple visions of the desert that highlight its contrast with life at the urban center and ignore the tensions between them. Sinai desert tourism offered a popular alternative to Israeli desert tourism in the post-1967 period, yet today Eilat and the Dead Sea area are major tourist attractions, and Negev tourism is developing. Tourist publicity highlights the unspoiled landscape, yet offers tours of archeological sites that are World Cultural Heritage sites, as well as a diversity of modern rural settlements in the Negev. Tourism highlights the simple life in nature in the open space and its spiritual dimension, but also offers a rough terrain for adventure seekers and upscale lodgings with "pampering amenities." Jewish desert sites perform "Bedouin hospitality" for tourists, but visits to Bedouin towns and villages reveal rapidly changing and diverse lifestyles in different settings. Epilogue chapter abstractIn the post-1967 era, the emergence of two divergent visions of Israel reveals continuity with earlier themes and metaphors surrounding desert-settlement relations. One advocates a return to pre-1967 borders in exchange for peace, which led to the peace treaty with Egypt and the Oslo agreement and advances transnational cooperation around common interests. The second vision promotes the Jewish settlement and security agenda in the occupied territories, embracing the view of an inherently conflictual relation between Israel and its neighbors. The epilogue examines the entrenchment of Israel settlement and security discourse and the growing impact of the "besieged island" template. Israel has surrounded itself with walls to prevent illegal entry and terrorist attacks, recreating a modern Jewish ghetto while imposing territorial divisions and besieged islands within the Palestinian territory. Israeli culture may also provide alternative solutions for the negotiation of a different future in the Middle East.

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Book SynopsisAt once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations within Zionist and Israeli culture. In the Judaic textual tradition, it evokes exile and punishment, yet is also a site for origin myths, the divine presence, and sanctity. Secular Zionism developed its own spin on the duality of the desert as the romantic site of Jews' biblical roots that inspired the Hebrew culture, and as the barren land outside the Jewish settlements in Palestine, featuring them as an oasis of order and technological progress within a symbolic desert. Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement and security concerns, environmental sympathies, and the commodifying tourist gaze. Drawing on literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons, Zerubavel reveals the complexities and contradictions that mark Israeli society's semiotics of space in relation to the Middle East, and the central role of the "besieged island" trope in Israeli culture and politics.Trade Review"Written with passion, innovation, and clarity, Desert in the Promised Land makes an original and significant contribution towards understanding the deeper currents of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By analyzing the role of the desert in Zionist ideology and the collective identity of Israel, Zerubavel adds new dimensions to her groundbreaking and acclaimed study of Israeli myths and memory, Recovered Roots." -- Tom Segev * author of 1949: The First Israelis *"In Desert in the Promised Land, space and memory, desert and settlement, are interwoven into a complex and fascinating portrait of Israel. Yael Zerubavel has written an engaging book that combines anthropology, culture, and history." -- Anita Shapira * author of Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel *"Yael Zerubavel has produced an important, original study of the multiple meanings of the desert in Zionist and Israeli culture. Ranging from the early twentieth century to the present, Zerubavel brings together a vast array of sources, which she reads with deep insight and describes in graceful prose." -- Derek J. Penslar * author of Jews and the Military: A History *"In a rewarding but not easy read, Zerubavel analyzes the complex meanings and varied perceptions of this desert for Jews before 1948 and for Israelis thereafter. She organizes her analysis as a metaphysical yet also a chronological journey through the symbolic desert landscape of space and meaning. The text moves from the ancient biblical story of divine revelations and of national birth of the Jewish people to the more recent tension between the themes of desert and settlement as opposing symbolic landscapes. Recommended." -- B. Harris Jr. * CHOICE *"Desert in the Promised Land is not an academic exercise in abstract distinctions, but a 'metaphorical journey' through the collective Jewish Israeli imaginary drawing from literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons. Recommended to all academic libraries." -- Roger S. Kohn * Association of Jewish Libraries *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: chapter abstractThe introduction sets the stage for exploring the divergent meanings of the desert as a symbolic landscape within the "spatial code" that Hebrew, and later Israeli, culture developed. Hebrew culture foregrounded the settlement as the key to Jewish national revival and relegated the desert to the background. This study reverses this relation, placing the desert at the center and setting out to examine the ambiguities underlying desert-settlement relations. The introduction presents the historical and thematic framework of the book. The first part addresses the duality of the symbolic desert in the Hebrew culture of late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine. The second part focuses on post-1948 Israel and the concrete Negev desert that is now included in its territory, examining the construction of the desert within the discourses and practices of settlement, environmentalism, and tourism, thus revealing the diverse visions of the desert in Israeli culture. 1Desert as Historical Metaphor chapter abstractThis chapter explores the dual meaning of the desert as a chronotope that links space and memory. The desert plays a critical role in the biblical exodus, as the "nonplace" set between Egypt, the land of exile, on the one hand, and the Promised Land, on the other, and the desert is hence the site of divine revelations and profound transitions that shaped the Israelites' collective identity. Jewish memory views the desert as representing the period of Jewish exile that led to the destruction of the homeland. Jewish tradition interprets exile as a divine punishment and Zionism constructed it as a regressive period within its decline narrative. References to the landscape outside Jewish settlements as a desolate "desert" and a "wasteland" underscored the redemptive mission of the Zionist settlement. The discussion addresses the tension between these interpretations and the use of the desert as a symbolic category. 2The Desert Mystique chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on European Jewish immigrants' fascination with the desert mystique. The desert appealed to European Zionist Jews as the mythical site of origins that preserved their ancient heritage. Orientalist images of the desert as resistant to modernity and change further reinforced the mythical view of the desert and its Bedouin inhabitants, but also Yemenite Jews, as inspiration for the construction of a modern Hebrew culture and identity. A nostalgic longing for the ancient past led some Zionist settlers and Hebrew youth to selectively adapt cultural idioms from Palestinian Arabs and generated the hybrid "Hebrew Bedouin" identity and a Hebrew desert lore. Other Zionist immigrants warned against the impact of the East on the Hebrew culture. The competing attitudes to the East reveal the Zionist Jewish settlers' ambivalence, as exiles returning to their homeland with conflicting ideas of separateness and belonging to the Middle East. 3Desert as the Counter-Place chapter abstractThis chapter explores settlement discourse and its competing interpretation of the desert as the counter-place. Early Zionist settlement narratives allude to wide-ranging terrains such as sands, swamps, barren mountains, and arid land as aspects of a hostile and chaotic "desert" while presenting the Jewish settlement as an "oasis" or "island" of order, modernity, and progress. The gendering of landscapes, the veneration of technology, and the use of war rhetoric enhance the achievements of the Jewish settlement in transforming its environment, and these ideas have been articulated in literature, songs, and art. The discussion addresses the influence of prevalent Western colonialist and modernist ideas and land-reclamation practices on the discourse and practices of Zionist settlement. As the national conflict in Palestine flared up in the 1930s, the discourses of settlement and security became intertwined and played a more prominent rolein shaping the view of the desert-settlement relations. 4The Negev Frontier chapter abstractAfter the 1948 war, the new state of Israel included the large and arid Negev region, and the discussion shifts from the symbolic desert outside the Jewish settlement to a concrete desert that has become an internal Jewish frontier. Although Prime Minister Ben-Gurion championed the goal of "making the desert bloom" and the state transferred water to the Negev, the limited response by established Israeli Jews led to the forced settlement of new immigrants in the desert in the 1950s and 1960s. These rural settlements and development towns faced major hardships, and the post-1967 Jewish drive to settle the occupied territories further blurred the Negev's status as a frontier and a periphery. Even with large areas of the Negev designated as national parks, nature reserves, and military bases, the call for new Jewish settlements continued, leading to experimental forms that diversified the Negev's Jewish population. 5The Negev Bedouins chapter abstractThe Negev's Bedouin population, greatly diminished after 1948, is the focus of this chapter. The state relocated most Negev Bedouins to the enclosed Siyag area, where they remained under military administration until 1966. Since then it has pursued an urbanization plan for the fast-growing Bedouin population in designated "Bedouin towns," yet a significant number of Bedouins refuse to settle their land claims, preferring to remain in their unrecognized rural villages. The government regards the so-called "Bedouin dispersion" as the embodiment of a chaotic and subversive counter-place while it promotes Jewish settlements in the Negev. Residents of the unrecognized villages live in the gray zone of a semi-permanent temporary state. The Bedouins' growing alienation, the rise of crime in the Negev, and harsh measures by law enforcement contribute to the perception of the Negev as the Wild South. 6Unsettled Landscapes chapter abstractThis chapter examines the environmental discourse and its revisionist view of desert-settlement relations. The environmental lobby acknowledges the desert-settlement opposition but reinterprets its meaning: the desert represents nature and the open space that must be protected from an overly aggressive settlement drive and development projects, and from its perception as a "national dump" for undesired, discredited, and dangerous human and material elements. Most of the desert is designated for nature reserves, national parks, and military bases. The environmentalists employ salvage rhetoric and the legal recourse to defend the desert environment from settlement development and industrial projects, while some proponents of the settlement agenda attack their position as anti-Zionist. The discussion highlights the contested visions of the desert and the fluidity of the coalitions formed between the state, local authorities, the army, the industry, tourism, and the environmental lobby in different cases. 7The Desert and the Tourist Gaze chapter abstractThis chapter examines the discourse and practices of tourism, which offer multiple visions of the desert that highlight its contrast with life at the urban center and ignore the tensions between them. Sinai desert tourism offered a popular alternative to Israeli desert tourism in the post-1967 period, yet today Eilat and the Dead Sea area are major tourist attractions, and Negev tourism is developing. Tourist publicity highlights the unspoiled landscape, yet offers tours of archeological sites that are World Cultural Heritage sites, as well as a diversity of modern rural settlements in the Negev. Tourism highlights the simple life in nature in the open space and its spiritual dimension, but also offers a rough terrain for adventure seekers and upscale lodgings with "pampering amenities." Jewish desert sites perform "Bedouin hospitality" for tourists, but visits to Bedouin towns and villages reveal rapidly changing and diverse lifestyles in different settings. Epilogue chapter abstractIn the post-1967 era, the emergence of two divergent visions of Israel reveals continuity with earlier themes and metaphors surrounding desert-settlement relations. One advocates a return to pre-1967 borders in exchange for peace, which led to the peace treaty with Egypt and the Oslo agreement and advances transnational cooperation around common interests. The second vision promotes the Jewish settlement and security agenda in the occupied territories, embracing the view of an inherently conflictual relation between Israel and its neighbors. The epilogue examines the entrenchment of Israel settlement and security discourse and the growing impact of the "besieged island" template. Israel has surrounded itself with walls to prevent illegal entry and terrorist attacks, recreating a modern Jewish ghetto while imposing territorial divisions and besieged islands within the Palestinian territory. Israeli culture may also provide alternative solutions for the negotiation of a different future in the Middle East.

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Book SynopsisAmerican and Israeli Jews have historically clashed over the contours of Jewish identity, and their experience of modern Jewish life has been radically different. As Philip Roth put it, they are the "heirs jointly of a drastically bifurcated legacy." But what happens when the encounter between American and Israeli Jewishness takes place in literary form—when Jewish American novels make aliyah, or when Israeli novels are imported for consumption by the diaspora? Reading Israel, Reading America explores the politics of translation as it shapes the understandings and misunderstandings of Israeli literature in the United States and American Jewish literature in Israel. Engaging in close readings of translations of iconic novels by the likes of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and Yoram Kaniuk—in particular, the ideologically motivated omissions and additions in the translations, and the works' reception by reviewers and public intellectuals—Asscher decodes the literary encounter between Israeli and American Jews. These discrepancies demarcate an ongoing cultural dialogue around representations of violence, ethics, Zionism, diaspora, and the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. Navigating the disputes between these "rival siblings" of the Jewish world, Asscher provocatively untangles the cultural relations between Israeli and American Jews.Trade Review"In this illuminating and sharp-eyed work, translation provides a powerful lens to discern what connects and divides Israeli and American Jews. Taking the literary landscape in which they read each other as a rich site of cross-cultural meeting, Asscher shows how this encounter is also shaped and warped by mutual misunderstanding and divergent sociological and political currents."—Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto"This sparkling book gives us real insight into the evolution of Israeli and American Jews' increasingly complex relationship. With impressive literary sophistication and wide-ranging historical knowledge, Omri Asscher reveals how translation has served not only as a bridge but as a site of encounter and even confrontation."—David Myers, University of California, Los Angeles"A timely book; the relationship between Israel and America continues to resonate in 2020, perhaps even more so than it has in the past."—Moshe Weisblum, Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter"[A] fascinating and original study... Asscher's book is impressive, and it stands out as the first full-length study of literary translation in the context of Israeli-American Jewish relations during the period in question. It will surely serve as an important resource for future scholars in translation studies, Jewish studies, and those focusing on homeland/diaspora relations."—Anthony Wexler, AJS Review"Omri Asscher's first book is surely one of the most interesting and critically consequential studies of Israeli literary culture to appear in the last few years, especially concerning its influence and reception abroad... [M]any readers of Reading Israel, Reading America's early chapters may never be able to fully place their complete trust in a translated Hebrew novel ever again... It cannot be overemphasized how often Asscher's discussion encompasses works that have had a tremendous influence on American readers... [W]e have no other study quite like it and future readers, scholars, and translators seeking to be more mindful of their own identities, biases, and practices, will surely be in his debt."—Ranen Omer-Sherman, Hebrew Studies"Reading Israel, Reading America compellingly and thoroughly explores the politics of translation as it shapes the understandings and misunderstandings of Israeli literature in the United States and American Jewish literature in Israel. [...] Asscher vividly examines the ideology of these cultural agents in the literary field and provides a deep description of the main trends in the translation and integration of Hebrew literature in America and American Jewish literature in Israel in the second half of the twentieth century while also outlining the collective portrait they helped shape in those years in the respective literary fields. [...] [a] fascinating and original project."—Elazar Ben-Lulu, American Jewish History"A comprehensive exploration of the politics of translation.... Asscher's book is a truly fascinating work, a major contribution to the question of how the dynamics of translation enhance our understanding, not only of Israeli and American Jewish literature, but of the respective societies themselves. Omri Asscher is nothing if not erudite in literature and sociology; there was the rare page in Reading Israel, Reading America from which this reviewer did not learn something.... [E]stimable."—Jerome A. Chanes, Contemporary JewryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Translating across the Homeland–Diaspora Divide 1. The Zionist Transformation 2. Ethical Conundrums 3. Israeli Jewishness for American Eyes 4. Jewish American Literature Makes Aliyah 5. "Judaism in Translation" Conclusion: Entangled Self-Perceptions

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Book SynopsisAmerican and Israeli Jews have historically clashed over the contours of Jewish identity, and their experience of modern Jewish life has been radically different. As Philip Roth put it, they are the "heirs jointly of a drastically bifurcated legacy." But what happens when the encounter between American and Israeli Jewishness takes place in literary form—when Jewish American novels make aliyah, or when Israeli novels are imported for consumption by the diaspora? Reading Israel, Reading America explores the politics of translation as it shapes the understandings and misunderstandings of Israeli literature in the United States and American Jewish literature in Israel. Engaging in close readings of translations of iconic novels by the likes of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, and Yoram Kaniuk—in particular, the ideologically motivated omissions and additions in the translations, and the works' reception by reviewers and public intellectuals—Asscher decodes the literary encounter between Israeli and American Jews. These discrepancies demarcate an ongoing cultural dialogue around representations of violence, ethics, Zionism, diaspora, and the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. Navigating the disputes between these "rival siblings" of the Jewish world, Asscher provocatively untangles the cultural relations between Israeli and American Jews.Trade Review"In this illuminating and sharp-eyed work, translation provides a powerful lens to discern what connects and divides Israeli and American Jews. Taking the literary landscape in which they read each other as a rich site of cross-cultural meeting, Asscher shows how this encounter is also shaped and warped by mutual misunderstanding and divergent sociological and political currents."—Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto"This sparkling book gives us real insight into the evolution of Israeli and American Jews' increasingly complex relationship. With impressive literary sophistication and wide-ranging historical knowledge, Omri Asscher reveals how translation has served not only as a bridge but as a site of encounter and even confrontation."—David Myers, University of California, Los Angeles"A timely book; the relationship between Israel and America continues to resonate in 2020, perhaps even more so than it has in the past."—Moshe Weisblum, Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter"[A] fascinating and original study... Asscher's book is impressive, and it stands out as the first full-length study of literary translation in the context of Israeli-American Jewish relations during the period in question. It will surely serve as an important resource for future scholars in translation studies, Jewish studies, and those focusing on homeland/diaspora relations."—Anthony Wexler, AJS Review"Omri Asscher's first book is surely one of the most interesting and critically consequential studies of Israeli literary culture to appear in the last few years, especially concerning its influence and reception abroad... [M]any readers of Reading Israel, Reading America's early chapters may never be able to fully place their complete trust in a translated Hebrew novel ever again... It cannot be overemphasized how often Asscher's discussion encompasses works that have had a tremendous influence on American readers... [W]e have no other study quite like it and future readers, scholars, and translators seeking to be more mindful of their own identities, biases, and practices, will surely be in his debt."—Ranen Omer-Sherman, Hebrew Studies"Reading Israel, Reading America compellingly and thoroughly explores the politics of translation as it shapes the understandings and misunderstandings of Israeli literature in the United States and American Jewish literature in Israel. [...] Asscher vividly examines the ideology of these cultural agents in the literary field and provides a deep description of the main trends in the translation and integration of Hebrew literature in America and American Jewish literature in Israel in the second half of the twentieth century while also outlining the collective portrait they helped shape in those years in the respective literary fields. [...] [a] fascinating and original project."—Elazar Ben-Lulu, American Jewish History"A comprehensive exploration of the politics of translation.... Asscher's book is a truly fascinating work, a major contribution to the question of how the dynamics of translation enhance our understanding, not only of Israeli and American Jewish literature, but of the respective societies themselves. Omri Asscher is nothing if not erudite in literature and sociology; there was the rare page in Reading Israel, Reading America from which this reviewer did not learn something.... [E]stimable."—Jerome A. Chanes, Contemporary JewryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Translating across the Homeland–Diaspora Divide 1. The Zionist Transformation 2. Ethical Conundrums 3. Israeli Jewishness for American Eyes 4. Jewish American Literature Makes Aliyah 5. "Judaism in Translation" Conclusion: Entangled Self-Perceptions

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Book SynopsisWithin the broad contours of Islamic traditions, Muslims are enjoined to fast during the month of Ramadan, they are invited to a disciplined practice of prayer, and they are offered the Quran as the divine revelation in the most beautiful verbal form. But what happens if Muslims choose not to fast, or give up prayer, or if the Quran's beauty seems inaccessible? When Muslims do not take up the path of piety, what happens to their relationships with more devout Muslims who are neighbors, friends, and kin? Between Muslims provides an ethnographic account of Iraqi Kurdish Muslims who turn away from devotional piety yet remain intimately engaged with Islamic traditions and with other Muslims. Andrew Bush offers a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, rejecting simple stereotypes about ethnic or sectarian identities. Integrating textual analysis of poetry, sermons, and Islamic history into accounts of everyday life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims illuminates the interplay of attraction and aversion to Islam among ordinary Muslims.Trade Review"A finely nuanced study about the impossibility of sequestering what is religious from what is not. In exemplary fashion, Andrew Bush shows us how the categories with which we work—religion, atheism, or secularism—are insufficient to understand the simultaneously sacred and profane world of everyday life."—Faisal Devji, Oxford University"Andrew Bush has written a remarkable book that makes highly original contributions to the anthropology of religion as well as Kurdish studies. There is no other book quite like this. Approaching Kurdish society through its poetics, he has grasped important insights into the ambiguities of everyday ethics underlying the social reality of contemporary Kurdistan."—Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University"Written with a scholar's rigor and a poet's grace, Between Muslims depicts textures of Islamic tradition rarely discussed in the literature. Fiercely independent in its approach to theorizing Muslim life, this deeply-layered monograph is a must-read for scholars in anthropology, religious studies, and beyond."—Noah Salomon, Carleton College"A refreshing departure from the focus on nationalist identity in studies of Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims is a beautifully written and original work on the dynamics of Islamic traditions. Andrew Bush subtly explores how 'fractures of difference' are lived in everyday intimate relationships."—Sara Pursley, New York University"[G]roundbreaking and innovative... Between Muslims holds up as an accessible and eloquent account of social dynamics in contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan."—Edith Szanto, Journal of the American Academy of Religion"A nuanced reflection on how Muslims inhabit lukewarm attitudes toward piety in contexts suffused with piety. [Between Muslims] is also an elegant exploration of Kurdish poetry and the ways it animates contemporary Kurds' self-expression."—Susan MacDougall, Ethnos"Between Muslims is a major contribution to scholarshipon the importance of multiple ways of being Islamic."—Jeremy F. Walton, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"This beautifully written book explores a number of contradictions among those who have 'turned away from piety' and yet do not renounce Islam, but seek to know the 'beloved' in Iraqi Kurdistan. Through an insightful analysis of mystical poetry, Bush additionally demonstrates how the pious and those who have turned away from piety negotiate desire, understand apostasy, and relate to each other across different ranges of piety through patience and acts of 'holding back.'"—The Association of Middle East Anthropology Book Award Committee"The unique positionality of his subjects allows Bush to offer a valuable modus vivendi to the great 'text vs. lived experience' debate in the academy: his approach necessarily requires an engagement with text, but not as objects which naturally unfold according to their own purposes (as is often the case in our deliberations about Islam) but rather as objects continuously transformed in the process of being made meaningful to an individual's experience of the world, which itself cannot be extricated from its relationship with others. This refreshinglyunmodern emphasis on relationality (instead of isolated self-determining subjects) permeates the entirety of his study, focused as it is on the life-worlds that emergebetweenMuslims."—Rushain Abbasi, MarginaliaTable of ContentsIntroduction: Fieldwork in Kurdistan: Islamic Traditions, Ordinary Relationships, and a Paradox 1. Quran and Zoroaster: Attraction and Authority in Muslim Ethics 2. Christians, Kafirs, and Nationalists in Kurdish Poetry 3. Mystical Desire, Ordinary Desire: Love, Friendship, and Kinship 4. Separating Faith and Kufir in an Islamic Society 5. Pleasure Beyond Piety: Religious Difference in Domestic Space Epilogue: "Dear Reader!"

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Book SynopsisMemoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization. Those on the margins were often made to bear the burden of the nation as a whole, whether as scapegoats in moments of crisis or as symbols of degeneration, ripe for transformation by reformers, philanthropists, and nationalists. Shining a light into the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe—from the often squalid poorhouse of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery—Stepchildren of the Shtetl reconsiders the place of the lowliest members of an already stigmatized minority. Trade Review"In this pioneering book, Natan M. Meir illuminates the lives of those on the margins of an already marginalized people—the Jews of Eastern Europe. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, he revolutionizes our understanding of the shtetl by shedding light on the beggars, orphans, and others who dwelled in its shadows."—Nathaniel Deutsch, author of Inventing America's 'Worst' Family: Eugenics, Islam, and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael"In Stepchildren of the Shtetl, Natan M. Meir connects everyday social experience to questions of political culture writ large, describing how the 'marginal' in Jewish society often came to serve as a figure for East European Jewry as a whole. An original and desperately needed book."—Hillel J. Kieval, author of Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands"This outstanding book offers us a glimpse at the underbelly of a Jewish community rarely studied from this vantage point. Meir tackles an elusive topic with analytic skill, keen sensitivity, and clear, accessible prose."—Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History"A book on the treatment of marginals in literature, history, and folklore smacks of brilliance....Meir has spotlighted a central aspect of Jewish life. His method of blending past images with present-day ideological concerns undoubtedly enlivens scholarship and offers a productive example for the profession."—Brian Horowitz, H-Judaic"Meir's study of the poor, disabled, and mad in Jewish Eastern Europe is a landmark achievement, a book that establishes a neglected field.Healso makes a signal contribution to the field of disability history that will be of interest far beyond Jewish studies. Each chapter reveals historical gems. Highly recommended."—D. Biale, CHOICE"Natan Meir's Stepchildren of the Shtetl is a remarkable work. Drawing from Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish sources, equally anchored in the deep recesses of the Jewish past and the latest innovations in disability and gender studies, Meir has given us as much of a glimpse into the margins of east European Jewry as possible. And he links what he finds to the larger story of the Jews at this juncture: the tortuous and ambivalent entry of a historically Othered people into a modernizing region of Europe that often continued to see its Jews as marginal."—Jarrod Tanny, Association for Jewish Studies Review"[Stepchildren of the Shtetl] provides a number of important insights regarding the lives of marginal Jews. Vitally, it includes Jewish and non-Jewish attitudes to liminal members of the Jewish community, and the concept of Jews as a racial and biological 'other' in and of themselves. Moreover, Meir engages with a range of important topics concerning Disability-Jewish history of the era, including but not limited to institutionalization, philanthropy, communal care and charity, media representation, religious, folk and supernatural beliefs, and socioeconomic and political uplift of marginalized people."—Samuel Brady, Jewish Historical StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Jewish Marginal People in Premodern Europe 2. Blind Beggars and Orphan Recruits: The Russian State, the Kahal, and Marginal Jews in the Early Nineteenth Century 3. A Pile of Dust and Rubble": Poorhouses, Real and Imaginary 4. The Cholera Wedding 5. A "Republic of Beggars"? Charity, Jewish Backwardness, and the Specter of the Jewish Idler 6. Madness and the Mad: From Family Burden to National Affliction 7. "We Singing Jews, We Jews Possessed": The Jewish Outcast as National Icon Epilogue Conclusion: Jewish Intersectionality at the European Fin-de-Siècle

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Book SynopsisFive centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past. Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.Trade Review"Dalia Kandiyoti lucidly traces the history and memory of crypto-Jewishness across historical periods, languages, and nations. Theoretically sophisticated, historically rigorous, and superbly written, The Converso's Return is a stimulating read for anyone interested in how literature makes it possible to reimagine a past fraught with contradictions, absences, and silences." -- Tabea Alexa Linhard * author of Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean History *"Embedded in a sophisticated theoretical framework and a wide range of historical reference, The Converso's Return brilliantly explores and confronts questions of memory's use and representation. In creating a new literary map based on seemingly disparate texts that actually belong together, Dalia Kandiyoti is ever vigilant to the political implications of all forms of return." -- Ammiel Alcalay * author of After Jews and Arabs *

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Book SynopsisFive centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past. Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.Trade Review"Dalia Kandiyoti lucidly traces the history and memory of crypto-Jewishness across historical periods, languages, and nations. Theoretically sophisticated, historically rigorous, and superbly written, The Converso's Return is a stimulating read for anyone interested in how literature makes it possible to reimagine a past fraught with contradictions, absences, and silences." -- Tabea Alexa Linhard * author of Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean History *"Embedded in a sophisticated theoretical framework and a wide range of historical reference, The Converso's Return brilliantly explores and confronts questions of memory's use and representation. In creating a new literary map based on seemingly disparate texts that actually belong together, Dalia Kandiyoti is ever vigilant to the political implications of all forms of return." -- Ammiel Alcalay * author of After Jews and Arabs *

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Book SynopsisThe inside story of political protest in Saudi Arabia—on the ground, in the suburbs, and in the face of increasing state repression. Graveyard of Clerics takes up two global phenomena intimately linked in Saudi Arabia: urban sprawl and religious activism. Saudi suburbia emerged after World War II as citizens fled crowded inner cities. Developed to encourage a society of docile, isolated citizens, suburbs instead opened new spaces for political action. Religious activists in particular turned homes, schools, mosques, and summer camps into resources for mobilization. With the support of suburban grassroots networks, activists won local elections and found opportunities to protest government actions—until they faced a new wave of repression under the current Saudi leadership. Pascal Menoret spent four years in Saudi Arabia in the places where today's Islamic activism first emerged. With this book, he tells the stories of the people actively countering the Saudi state and highlights how people can organize and protest even amid increasingly intense police repression. This book changes the way we look at religious activism in Saudi Arabia. It also offers a cautionary tale: the ongoing repression by Saudi elites—achieved often with the complicity of the international community—is shutting down grassroots political movements with significant consequences for the country and the world.Trade Review"A distinguished ethnographer, Pascal Menoret excavates the Islamic Awakening in Saudi Arabia with great empathy and understanding. Once again, he demonstrates his ability to penetrate a world often associated with radicalism, bigotry, intolerance and violence, bringing us face to face with the men of the movement, and their rise and demise in the Saudi state." -- Madawi al-Rasheed * London School of Economics, author of Salman's Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia *"Pascal Menoret is an intrepid field researcher who gained unique access to communities in Saudi Arabia either closed to or ignored by other Western scholars. His insights into how the physical geography of Riyadh has shaped the development of its various social mobilizations are provocative and enlightening. This book is a fascinating read." -- F. Gregory Gause III * Texas A&M University, author of The International Relations of the Persian Gulf *"There is no doubt that this study will be invaluable to anyone interested in Middle East studies with a focus on Islamic activism, youth recruitment and mobilization, spatial politics and the intersection of urban planning, activism, and state repression. This original work is a much-needed intervention that advocates for the urgency and need for activism that 'may resurface when the conditions are ripe'" -- Jonas Elbousty * International Journal of Middle East Studies *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Part I: The Islamic Awakening chapter abstractThe Islamic Awakening is a political movement created in schools, colleges, and mosques by educators, preachers, and clerics. This part looks at how everyday Saudis become activists, and what type of repression they encounter when organizing and protesting in public. 2Part II: Saudi Suburbia chapter abstractThe Islamic Awakening emerged in the sprawling landscape of the Saudi suburbs, created in the 1960s and 1970s by princes and developers with the help of European urban planners. This part looks at the making of Saudi suburbia and examines the victory of Islamic Awakening candidates in the municipal elections of 2005. 3Part III: Awareness Groups and Summer Camps chapter abstractThe electoral victory of 2005 was the result of the mobilization of myriads of Islamic Awakening groups in local mosques, schools, and summer camps. This part analyzes the everyday structures of the Awakening: a high school Islamic group and the annual summer camps of the movement. It looks at how political repression targets everyday Islamic activism. 4Part IV: Leaving Islamic Activism Behind chapter abstractAs a result of the increased crackdown on Islamic movements, young activists have either tried to reform the Islamic Awakening from within or taken their distances with the movement. This part looks at the consequences of repression on individual mobilization, and analyzes the current state of the Islamic movement in Saudi Arabia.

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Book SynopsisMemoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization. Those on the margins were often made to bear the burden of the nation as a whole, whether as scapegoats in moments of crisis or as symbols of degeneration, ripe for transformation by reformers, philanthropists, and nationalists. Shining a light into the darkest corners of Jewish society in eastern Europe—from the often squalid poorhouse of the shtetl to the slums and insane asylums of Warsaw and Odessa, from the conscription of poor orphans during the reign of Nicholas I to the cholera wedding, a magical ritual in which an epidemic was halted by marrying outcasts to each other in the town cemetery—Stepchildren of the Shtetl reconsiders the place of the lowliest members of an already stigmatized minority. Trade Review"In this pioneering book, Natan M. Meir illuminates the lives of those on the margins of an already marginalized people—the Jews of Eastern Europe. Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, he revolutionizes our understanding of the shtetl by shedding light on the beggars, orphans, and others who dwelled in its shadows."—Nathaniel Deutsch, author of Inventing America's 'Worst' Family: Eugenics, Islam, and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael"In Stepchildren of the Shtetl, Natan M. Meir connects everyday social experience to questions of political culture writ large, describing how the 'marginal' in Jewish society often came to serve as a figure for East European Jewry as a whole. An original and desperately needed book."—Hillel J. Kieval, author of Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands"This outstanding book offers us a glimpse at the underbelly of a Jewish community rarely studied from this vantage point. Meir tackles an elusive topic with analytic skill, keen sensitivity, and clear, accessible prose."—Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History"A book on the treatment of marginals in literature, history, and folklore smacks of brilliance....Meir has spotlighted a central aspect of Jewish life. His method of blending past images with present-day ideological concerns undoubtedly enlivens scholarship and offers a productive example for the profession."—Brian Horowitz, H-Judaic"Meir's study of the poor, disabled, and mad in Jewish Eastern Europe is a landmark achievement, a book that establishes a neglected field.Healso makes a signal contribution to the field of disability history that will be of interest far beyond Jewish studies. Each chapter reveals historical gems. Highly recommended."—D. Biale, CHOICE"Natan Meir's Stepchildren of the Shtetl is a remarkable work. Drawing from Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish sources, equally anchored in the deep recesses of the Jewish past and the latest innovations in disability and gender studies, Meir has given us as much of a glimpse into the margins of east European Jewry as possible. And he links what he finds to the larger story of the Jews at this juncture: the tortuous and ambivalent entry of a historically Othered people into a modernizing region of Europe that often continued to see its Jews as marginal."—Jarrod Tanny, Association for Jewish Studies Review"[Stepchildren of the Shtetl] provides a number of important insights regarding the lives of marginal Jews. Vitally, it includes Jewish and non-Jewish attitudes to liminal members of the Jewish community, and the concept of Jews as a racial and biological 'other' in and of themselves. Moreover, Meir engages with a range of important topics concerning Disability-Jewish history of the era, including but not limited to institutionalization, philanthropy, communal care and charity, media representation, religious, folk and supernatural beliefs, and socioeconomic and political uplift of marginalized people."—Samuel Brady, Jewish Historical StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Jewish Marginal People in Premodern Europe 2. Blind Beggars and Orphan Recruits: The Russian State, the Kahal, and Marginal Jews in the Early Nineteenth Century 3. A Pile of Dust and Rubble": Poorhouses, Real and Imaginary 4. The Cholera Wedding 5. A "Republic of Beggars"? Charity, Jewish Backwardness, and the Specter of the Jewish Idler 6. Madness and the Mad: From Family Burden to National Affliction 7. "We Singing Jews, We Jews Possessed": The Jewish Outcast as National Icon Epilogue Conclusion: Jewish Intersectionality at the European Fin-de-Siècle

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Book SynopsisThere are few instances of a contemporary Western European society more firmly welded to religion than Ireland is to Catholicism. For much of the twentieth century, to be considered a good Irish citizen was to be seen as a good and observant Catholic. Today, the opposite may increasingly be the case. The Irish Catholic Church, once a spiritual institution beyond question, is not only losing influence and relevance; in the eyes of many, it has become something utterly desacralized. In this book, Hugh Turpin offers an innovative and in-depth account of the nature and emergence of "ex-Catholicism"—a new model of the good, and secular, Irish person that is being rapidly adopted in Irish society. Using rich quantitative and qualitative research methods, Turpin explains the emergence and character of religious rejection in the Republic. He examines how numerous factors—including economic growth, social liberalization, attenuated domestic religious socialization, the institutional scandals and moral collapse of the Church, and the Church's lingering influence in social institutions and laws—have interacted to produce a rapid growth in ex-Catholicism. By tracing the frictions within and between practicing Catholics, cultural Catholics, and ex-Catholics in a period of profound cultural change and moral reckoning, Turpin shows how deeply the meanings of being religious or non-religious have changed in the country once described as "Holy Catholic Ireland."Trade Review"Turpin weaves regression models together with detailed accounts of individual and institutional agency, and with turns of phrase both humorous and profound, to produce our most holistic account of secularization to date. An interdisciplinary gem of a book."—Jonathan Lanman, Queen's University, Belfast"This is not only the best, most insightful book on the situation of religion and secularization in contemporary Ireland—it is one of the best, most insightful books written on secularization in general that I have read in a long time. Sharp, engaging, informative, thoughtful, and fascinating—this book is a must for anyone wanting to understand the evaporation of religion in the Western world."—Phil Zuckerman, Pitzer College"Turpin tells the fascinating story of what ordinary people think and feel about the disintegration of Catholic hegemony in Ireland. The book is enthralling: deeply researched, full of insights and exceptionally well written, it deserves all the praise and prizes that will come its way, if there is any justice in this world."—David Voas, University College London"Prior to Turpin's research, there had been no systematic, in-depth studies of those who could be classified as nones in the Republic of Ireland.Unholy Catholic Irelandis a first and important step in what I hope and anticipate will become a topic of further research – by Turpin and by other scholars. Based on both qualitative and quantitative research, it lays a strong foundation for future studies."—Gladys Ganiel, Slugger O'Toole"This study is to be warmly welcomed. It is written beautifully and makes a significant contribution to the field of the study of Irish Catholicism—and its rejection. Believers and non-believers alike will learn much from Turpin's findings, which invite us to reconsider the complexities of Irish religion and irreligion anew."—Salvador Ryan, The Irish Independent"Unholy Catholic Ireland brings a fresh and rich analysis to the study of Irish Catholicism, especially in the wake of decades of scandals. As such, it will appeal to students of Catholicism but especially, and more generally, those interested in better understanding religious change. And its methodological approach—combining the 'deep' insight of ethnographic work with the 'wide' analysis of social surveys—will serve as a guidepost for social scientists studying secularizing processes in other societies."—Brian Conway, Contemporary Sociology"Hugh Turpin provides the most comprehensive description and analysis of this conundrum [at the heart of Catholic Ireland]. This is an innovative, insightful, well-written book."—Tom Inglis, Journal of Contemporary ReligionTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Secularization, the Desacralization of the Church, and the Emergence of Ethno-Catholic "Nones" 2. "Hostages of Catholicism": Quantifying the Nature and Scale of the Rejection of the Church 3. "For Emergency Use Only": The Waning of Religious Socialization 4. "A Load of Shite": Hidden Cultures of Catholic Unbelief 5. "This Is Our Rising": Secularization as a Second Struggle for "Irish Freedom" 6. "Awakening from Conscription": Ex-Catholicism as Anti-Nostalgic Moralized Authenticity 7. "Blessed Are Those Who Are Persecuted Because of Righteousness": Coping with a Spoiled Religious Identity Epilogue: "Anyone Else Not Bothered?"

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Book SynopsisDances and balls appear throughout world literature as venues for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships, as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, ethnic, and national boundaries. In the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish culture, dance offers crucial insights into debates about emancipation and acculturation. While traditional Jewish law prohibits men and women from dancing together, Jewish mixed-sex dancing was understood as the very sign of modernity––and the ultimate boundary transgression. Writers of modern Jewish literature deployed dance scenes as a charged and complex arena for understanding the limits of acculturation, the dangers of ethnic mixing, and the implications of shifting gender norms and marriage patterns, while simultaneously entertaining their readers. In this pioneering study, Sonia Gollance examines the specific literary qualities of dance scenes, while also paying close attention to the broader social implications of Jewish engagement with dance. Combining cultural history with literary analysis and drawing connections to contemporary representations of Jewish social dance, Gollance illustrates how mixed-sex dancing functions as a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions.Trade Review"It Could Lead to Dancing is a fascinating exploration of the role of dance in literary representations of Jewish modernization and secularization. With sources from memoirs to dance history, focusing primarily on German and Yiddish fiction, this wonderful, immensely learned, and original book will attract interest among literary scholars and beyond." —Naomi Seidman, University of Toronto"Extensively researched and deftly written, Sonia Gollance's rich study guides us through a nuanced cultural history of Jewish mixed-sex dancing from the long nineteenth century into the present day. It Could Lead to Dancing confirms the importance of the Jewish perspective in literary dance studies, casting light on the dance floor as a site where social comportment reflected the political pursuits of acculturation, emancipation, and female empowerment." —Lucia Ruprecht, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge"What is arguably the most important aspect of Gollance's book... is its tackling one of the most well-known, yet little examined, topics of Jewish culture—the place of mixed-sex dancing in Jewish life, where mixed-sex dancing relates to social or vernacular dancing between men and women. ... what she aims to prove, and does so very effectively, is that tracing the existence of mixed-sex dancing... is not only about witnessing changing ideas of sexuality but how Jews addressed the radical transformations arising from modernity during the period spanning from the Enlightenment to World War II... These shifts relate to gender roles, secularization, debates about Jewish emancipation, urbanization, migration, and war."—Naomi Jackson, In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies"The mixed-sex dance scene, as Gollance successfully argues, is not only a plot device but an aesthetic choice. As such, It Could Lead to Dancing guides readers through a history of dance as both a cultural-historical subject and literary practice that will enhance the work of scholars and Jewish dance activists alike."—Sunny S. Yudkoff, Monatshefte"Gollance... offers an extensive, fascinating exploration of Jewish mixed-sex dancing... A well-written and fun read. Essential."—K. J. Wetmore Jr., CHOICE"Like the dance floor, 'a liminal space that eludes all kinds of boundaries,' Gollance... uncovers a field of cultural production that crosses and exposes linguistic and social borders (12). It is a contested field that renders new perspectives on the animating tensions of Jewish modernity."—Matthew Johnson, German Studies Review"Gollance presents a thorough exploration of the dynamics of mixed-sex dancing and draws compelling parallels to broader social and cultural circumstances surrounding Jews.... Through her nuanced writing, Gollance describes how Jews at times found acceptance from non-Jews in dance contexts, but the acceptance was often temporary or partial."—Rabbanit Dalia Davis, Contemporary Jewry"Sonia Gollance's It could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity is a thoroughly researched and engaging study of the role of mixed-sex dancing in modern Jewish life. Gollance mines a wide range of literary resources—novels, memoirs, short stories, plays and poems, in Yiddish, German, Hebrew and English, in the modern period (1780-1940) and beyond."—National Jewish Book Awards Judges"Gollance excels at interweaving a tremendous amount of research. It Could Lead to Dancing covers multiple centuries, geographic locations, venues, and languages. Indeed, each facet of this interdisciplinary topic is complex, and Gollance selected highly relevant case studies that reveal her material's nuance and scope. Gollance is in thorough command of her subject. It is an impressive feat.... Gollance illuminates complex material and a complex history in a clear, engaging, and compelling way."—Susan Funkenstein, Central European HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Space of the Dance Floor 1. The Choreography of Acculturation 2. How Jews Learned to Dance 3. The Tavern: Jewish Participation in Rural Leisure Culture 4. The Ballroom: Questions of Admission and Exclusion 5. The Wedding: Celebratory Ritual and Social Enforcement 6. The Dance Hall: Commercial Leisure Culture and American Sexual Mores Epilogue: "What Comes from Men and Women Dancing"

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Book SynopsisAmong the Jewish writers who emigrated from Eastern Europe to France in the 1910s and 1920s, a number chose to switch from writing in their languages of origin to writing primarily in French, a language that represented both a literary center and the promises of French universalism. But under the Nazi occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, these Jewish émigré writers—among them Irène Némirovsky, Benjamin Fondane, Romain Gary, Jean Malaquais, and Elsa Triolet—continued to write in their adopted language, even as the Vichy regime and Nazi occupiers denied their French identity through xenophobic and antisemitic laws. In this book, Julia Elsky argues that these writers reexamined both their Jewishness and their place as authors in France through the language in which they wrote. The group of authors Elsky considers depicted key moments in the war from their perspective as Jewish émigrés, including the June 1940 civilian flight from Paris, life in the occupied and southern zones, the roundups and internment camps, and the Resistance in France and in London. Writing in French, they expressed multiple cultural, religious, and linguistic identities, challenging the boundaries between center and periphery, between French and foreign, even when their sense of belonging was being violently denied.Trade Review"In this fine book, Elsky discusses five Jewish writers who explored the possibilities of writing in a 'Jewish voice' in French and grappled with issues of Jewish belonging during Vichy. Written in a clear and graceful style and based on original archival research, Writing Occupation will be of interest not only to historians and scholars of French literature, but to all those concerned by the fate of Jews in France, before and after the Second World War."—Susan Rubin Suleiman, author of The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France"Jews are the quintessential people not only of the book, but of multiple languages. Living in several worlds simultaneously, language becomes 'a province without a nation,' as Julia Elsky writes in this book. Her brilliant and highly original study of Jewish exiles living in France during World War II shows us that multilingualism demonstrates the porousness of national boundaries and serves as a crucial vehicle for exploring the multifaceted complexities of Jewish identity."—Susannah Heschel, author of The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany"Writing Occupation is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature focused on the rich hybrid culture created by immigrant and first-generation Jews in early twentieth-century France. Julia Elsky's nuanced and perceptive book draws important parallels between immigrant Jewish and postcolonial francophone writers and will be of great interest to historians and literary scholars alike."—Nadia Malinovich, author of French and Jewish: Culture and the Politics of Identity in Early Twentieth-Century France"Elsky demonstrates that the writers in her corpus destabilize the binaries of centre/periphery, native/non-native, outsider/insider, and major literature/minor literature. She also highlights the simultaneous universalism and particularism marking these writers' work, and the plurality of their identities stemming from their multilingualism, sense of belonging to multiple countries, political allegiances, and (dis)engagement with Judaism."—Helena Duffy, French Studies"Elsky's study of these Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France will be read with pleasure by researchers, instructors, and students, for the rich knowledge and insights it offers. One of its most refreshing aspects lies in her insistence on analyzing writers, texts, and contexts in all their complexity, firmly resisting ready-made labels, categorical judgments, and predetermined theories and ideologies. While the facts never 'speak for themselves,' they do prove stubbornly important and indispensable, particularly when they are so coherently and judiciously incorporated into specific readings and comparative assessments, as is the case here."—Nathan Bracher, H-France"Julia Elsky has provided a model of Jewish studies scholarship in Writing Occupation. Working at the intersection of history, literary studies, and Holocaust studies, the book articulates innovative questions about language, identity, and the Second World War in France. Clearly written with thorough analysis that engages with key themes, the book underlines the complexities of multilingualism in writing and in lives. It also raises potential future avenues of exploration including analysis of gendered voices and further examinations of the ways in which language plays a role in identity."—Shannon Fogg, H-Judaic"This book is an excellent contribution to the recent growth in French Jewish studies... Beyond its specific French and Jewish framework, Writing Occupation also contributes more broadly to the ways we think about multilingualism, French belonging, the language 'choices' of literary figures, and the various roles that language plays within the broad spectrum of migratory experiences. This book ought to also be commended for the balance it strikes between history and literary analysis. Elsky paints a vivid historical picture that is punctuated by excellent close readings of texts, which only make the arguments in this book that much more convincing."—Nick Underwood, Association for Jewish Studies Review"Elsky's insightful study of an underexplored 'Jewish Francophonie' increases our understanding of the complexity of foreign-born Jews' experiences in France during the Occupation. Her analysis of how these writers grappled with the problem of articulating their experiences fits well into current research on the relationship between language and identity."—Daphne McConnell and Richard Francis Crane, Holocaust and Genocide StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Jewish Émigré Writers and the French Language 1. A Jewish Poetics of Exile: Benjamin Fondane's Exodus 2. Accents in Jean Malaquais's Carrefour Marseille 3. European Language and the Resistance: Romain Gary's Heteroglossia 4. Buried Language: Elsa Triolet's Bilingualism 5. Displacing Stereotypes: Irène Némirovsky in the Occupied Zone Epilogue: Memory, Language, and Jewish Francophonie

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Book SynopsisWild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.Trade Review"Golan Y. Moskowitz's thorough study of Maurice Sendak's life and work unveils the struggles that led him to 'queer' his children's books. Moskowitz captures the essential forces behind his artwork, showing how Sendak was just as politically radical as he was emotionally provocative." -- Jack Zipes * University of Minnesota *"Easily the best study of Sendak to appear; deeply researched and utterly engaging. Moskowitz brings rich new context to Sendak's life, showing how the artist's historically sidelined queer and Jewish identity inspired his work. Even the notoriously cranky Sendak would have liked it." -- Kenneth Kidd * University of Florida *"This revelatory exploration of Maurice Sendak's life opens up vistas not only on creativity, queerness, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience but also, and most powerfully, on childhood. Moskowitz is a deft guide to the wild places of Sendak's imagination, where generations of children recognized something startling and true about themselves." -- Naomi Seidman * University of Toronto *"Moskowitz has reclaimed Sendak as one of great gay writers and artists of the 20th century... Astutely analyzing drafts of Sendak's narratives, and the progressive stages of his illustrations, Moskowitz demonstrates the sometimes subtle, but often quite overt, ways in which Sendak blurred gender lines and celebrates queer relationships." -- Raymond-jean Frontain * The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide *"InWild Visionary, Moskowitz presents a sensitive and discerning depiction of the life and work of Maurice Sendak, and the ways in which his story offers insights into broader tensions: between what children, and people more generally, see and need, and what the world thinks they see and need; between the worlds of cultural production and the various, often unseen forces that manage both to stifle and reward freedom and creativity." -- Tahneer Oksman * In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies *"This evocative...book captures Sendak's commitment to radical honesty from the inside out and challenges us to follow the threads of Jewishness, queerness, and other diversities of identity as they have shaped, and continue to shape, art and life and everything in between In Sendak's words, let the wild rumpus begin!" -- Noam Sienna * Journal of Jewish Identities *"Moskowitz persuasively grounds Sendak's creative output in his Jewish and queer identities, offering important insights into the links between sexual, ethnic, and cultural experiences of difference, the universal queerness of childhood, and the ways in which intergenerational trauma informs Jewish and immigrant identities in American culture." -- Gregg Drinkwater * Association for Jewish Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Introduction: From Limbo to Childhood chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the book's approach of situating a cultural giant within several intersecting histories and minority discourses, as well as analyzing the artist's work as an embodied testament to a complex historical and cultural experience. Contextualizing Sendak's sensitive but convoluted subjectivity within histories of modern childhood, Jewish American acculturation, and enduring affiliations between queer difference and children's literature, it offers a roadmap for the book and orients the project within broader studies of childhood, Jewishness, queerness, and affect. One: Where the Wild Things Acculturate: Roots and Wings in Interwar Brooklyn chapter abstractChapter 1 situates Sendak's artistic vision within intertwined histories of immigrant acculturation and the emergence of modern childhood. Early twentieth-century immigrants' children were in some ways socialized out of their own families of origin. Sendak was born into a zeitgeist of speed and mobility in a culture that celebrated mechanical innovation, youth, capitalism, and superhero fantasies. Popular consumerism exploded alongside the solidification of child psychology, surges in global antisemitism, and rising anxieties about fascism. Social commentators envisioned minorities and cityscapes as potentially threatening to the American child's healthy development. Sendak grew up sensitive to his parents' anxieties as Jewish immigrants and mesmerized by gritty urban spectacles and mass media. His youth clashed with dominant conceptions of childhood as a time of rose-colored, protected innocence. His creative work would instead convey the culturally fraught separation anxieties experienced between immigrant parents and American children in the interwar urban landscape. Two: Love in a Dangerous Landscape: Queer Kinship and Survival chapter abstractFocusing on the years of World War II, Chapter 2 examines Sendak's creative notions of kinship in dialogue with literature of Jewish families in contexts of migration, collective mourning, and survival. Sendak spent the war years as a young adolescent, aware that his relatives were being murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland. Tumultuous, but tight-knit relationships within his mourning family elucidate the almost divine significance his work would attribute to ruptured parent-child boundaries, creative sibling bonds, and queer yearnings. His work took elements characteristic, if stereotypic, of twentieth-century Yiddish-speaking Jewish families and transformed them into nursery rhyme and fairy tale archetypes. Sendak's childhood location within a milieu repeatedly targeted for violent destruction and shrouded in traumatic losses reverberates in his work. His mythical and cosmic fusions convey feelings about growing up with precarious identifications and emotional investment in familial pasts that he did not directly experience. Three: Surviving the American Dream: Early Childhood as Queer Lens at Midcentury chapter abstractIn the immediate postwar years, the young Sendak continued to negotiate competing realities. The dominant "American Dream" idealized childhood innocence, heterosexual marriage, and the suburban nuclear family; his parents' Jewish Brooklyn community mourned destroyed communities of origin; and his own relocation to Manhattan offered fraught realms of discreet exploration as a gay man. This chapter examines how the artist preserved his sense of self apart from a mainstream culture that devalued ethnically and sexually atypical people. Sendak's beginnings as an illustrator and picture-book artist reflect an unassimilable subjectivity that separated him from dominant social meanings and encouraged his investment in excavating his early childhood self. With the help of queer and Jewish mentors, including picture-book author Ruth Krauss and a gay Jewish therapist named Bertram Slaff, Sendak solidified his creative vision and began to subvert the limitations of the American Dream with queer and ethnically marginal elements. Four: "Milk in the Batter" and Controversy in the Making: "Camp," Stigma, and Public Spotlight in the Era of Social Liberation chapter abstractFocusing on the 1960s and 1970s, Chapter 4 connects Sendak's use of child's play to the challenges and triumphs of excluded and stigmatized outsiders. Sendak participated in a tradition historically employed by insider-outsider minorities, including Jews and queer people, whose difference could be selectively hidden in order "to pass." This chapter examines Sendak's relationship to costume, to the dramatic arts, and to spaces of social liberation, including Fire Island, as well as his use of child's play, theatricality, and "Camp" sensibilities in correspondences and picture books to work through feelings of queer shame and social incoherence. It reads his creative process in dialogue with sociological writing on the creativity of stigmatized individuals, queer theories of time and space, and psychoanalytic writings on the "creative personality." Sendak harnessed a stigmatized subjectivity to create messages that spoke to those disenchanted with the homogenous, middle-class ideals of midcentury America. Five: Inside Out: Processing the AIDS Crisis and Holocaust Memory Through the Romantic Child chapter abstractChapter 5 focuses on Sendak's life and work in the years following his move to Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1972, exploring how notions of "inside"' and "outside" intensified in his creative vision. As late twentieth-century Jews became, generally speaking, more enfranchised in middle-class America and were increasingly essentialized as complacent beneficiaries of "White privilege," anxiety about the need to preserve Jewish distinctiveness increased. Meanwhile, America institutionalized Holocaust memory and became more comfortable with Old World nostalgia. Mainstream culture in the 1980s also retreated from social liberation movements, empowering homophobia and social conservatism. Considering these contextual shifts, this chapter studies the aging Sendak's creative handling of boundary violations and "unnatural," death-infused relations, including visual mergers of the Holocaust with the AIDS crisis. It asks how he reconciled a political calling he felt during that crisis, which took many of his loved ones, with an impulse to turn inward. Conclusion: Conclusion: A Garden on the Edge of the World chapter abstractThis section reflects broadly on social and cultural influences that shaped Sendak's art, as well as on his legacy as a critic of collectively imposed simplifications of childhood. It connects the concerns of his art to contemporary creative representations of childhood, as well as to enduring social inequities. Childhood continues to operate as a cultural site contributing to definitions of deviance, as well as to the inclusion and exclusion of various minority populations, including Black Americans. Sendak celebrated the sensitivity, ferocity, and playful liminality of childhood, cultivating his own "inner child" as a position from which to articulate the complexity of a displaced queer subjectivity in a displaced immigrant family unit, as well as the dangers of puritanism and social coercion in the public sphere.

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Book SynopsisWild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.Trade Review"Golan Y. Moskowitz's thorough study of Maurice Sendak's life and work unveils the struggles that led him to 'queer' his children's books. Moskowitz captures the essential forces behind his artwork, showing how Sendak was just as politically radical as he was emotionally provocative." -- Jack Zipes * University of Minnesota *"Easily the best study of Sendak to appear; deeply researched and utterly engaging. Moskowitz brings rich new context to Sendak's life, showing how the artist's historically sidelined queer and Jewish identity inspired his work. Even the notoriously cranky Sendak would have liked it." -- Kenneth Kidd * University of Florida *"This revelatory exploration of Maurice Sendak's life opens up vistas not only on creativity, queerness, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience but also, and most powerfully, on childhood. Moskowitz is a deft guide to the wild places of Sendak's imagination, where generations of children recognized something startling and true about themselves." -- Naomi Seidman * University of Toronto *"Moskowitz has reclaimed Sendak as one of great gay writers and artists of the 20th century... Astutely analyzing drafts of Sendak's narratives, and the progressive stages of his illustrations, Moskowitz demonstrates the sometimes subtle, but often quite overt, ways in which Sendak blurred gender lines and celebrates queer relationships." -- Raymond-jean Frontain * The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide *"InWild Visionary, Moskowitz presents a sensitive and discerning depiction of the life and work of Maurice Sendak, and the ways in which his story offers insights into broader tensions: between what children, and people more generally, see and need, and what the world thinks they see and need; between the worlds of cultural production and the various, often unseen forces that manage both to stifle and reward freedom and creativity." -- Tahneer Oksman * In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies *"This evocative...book captures Sendak's commitment to radical honesty from the inside out and challenges us to follow the threads of Jewishness, queerness, and other diversities of identity as they have shaped, and continue to shape, art and life and everything in between In Sendak's words, let the wild rumpus begin!" -- Noam Sienna * Journal of Jewish Identities *"Moskowitz persuasively grounds Sendak's creative output in his Jewish and queer identities, offering important insights into the links between sexual, ethnic, and cultural experiences of difference, the universal queerness of childhood, and the ways in which intergenerational trauma informs Jewish and immigrant identities in American culture." -- Gregg Drinkwater * Association for Jewish Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Introduction: From Limbo to Childhood chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the book's approach of situating a cultural giant within several intersecting histories and minority discourses, as well as analyzing the artist's work as an embodied testament to a complex historical and cultural experience. Contextualizing Sendak's sensitive but convoluted subjectivity within histories of modern childhood, Jewish American acculturation, and enduring affiliations between queer difference and children's literature, it offers a roadmap for the book and orients the project within broader studies of childhood, Jewishness, queerness, and affect. One: Where the Wild Things Acculturate: Roots and Wings in Interwar Brooklyn chapter abstractChapter 1 situates Sendak's artistic vision within intertwined histories of immigrant acculturation and the emergence of modern childhood. Early twentieth-century immigrants' children were in some ways socialized out of their own families of origin. Sendak was born into a zeitgeist of speed and mobility in a culture that celebrated mechanical innovation, youth, capitalism, and superhero fantasies. Popular consumerism exploded alongside the solidification of child psychology, surges in global antisemitism, and rising anxieties about fascism. Social commentators envisioned minorities and cityscapes as potentially threatening to the American child's healthy development. Sendak grew up sensitive to his parents' anxieties as Jewish immigrants and mesmerized by gritty urban spectacles and mass media. His youth clashed with dominant conceptions of childhood as a time of rose-colored, protected innocence. His creative work would instead convey the culturally fraught separation anxieties experienced between immigrant parents and American children in the interwar urban landscape. Two: Love in a Dangerous Landscape: Queer Kinship and Survival chapter abstractFocusing on the years of World War II, Chapter 2 examines Sendak's creative notions of kinship in dialogue with literature of Jewish families in contexts of migration, collective mourning, and survival. Sendak spent the war years as a young adolescent, aware that his relatives were being murdered in Nazi-occupied Poland. Tumultuous, but tight-knit relationships within his mourning family elucidate the almost divine significance his work would attribute to ruptured parent-child boundaries, creative sibling bonds, and queer yearnings. His work took elements characteristic, if stereotypic, of twentieth-century Yiddish-speaking Jewish families and transformed them into nursery rhyme and fairy tale archetypes. Sendak's childhood location within a milieu repeatedly targeted for violent destruction and shrouded in traumatic losses reverberates in his work. His mythical and cosmic fusions convey feelings about growing up with precarious identifications and emotional investment in familial pasts that he did not directly experience. Three: Surviving the American Dream: Early Childhood as Queer Lens at Midcentury chapter abstractIn the immediate postwar years, the young Sendak continued to negotiate competing realities. The dominant "American Dream" idealized childhood innocence, heterosexual marriage, and the suburban nuclear family; his parents' Jewish Brooklyn community mourned destroyed communities of origin; and his own relocation to Manhattan offered fraught realms of discreet exploration as a gay man. This chapter examines how the artist preserved his sense of self apart from a mainstream culture that devalued ethnically and sexually atypical people. Sendak's beginnings as an illustrator and picture-book artist reflect an unassimilable subjectivity that separated him from dominant social meanings and encouraged his investment in excavating his early childhood self. With the help of queer and Jewish mentors, including picture-book author Ruth Krauss and a gay Jewish therapist named Bertram Slaff, Sendak solidified his creative vision and began to subvert the limitations of the American Dream with queer and ethnically marginal elements. Four: "Milk in the Batter" and Controversy in the Making: "Camp," Stigma, and Public Spotlight in the Era of Social Liberation chapter abstractFocusing on the 1960s and 1970s, Chapter 4 connects Sendak's use of child's play to the challenges and triumphs of excluded and stigmatized outsiders. Sendak participated in a tradition historically employed by insider-outsider minorities, including Jews and queer people, whose difference could be selectively hidden in order "to pass." This chapter examines Sendak's relationship to costume, to the dramatic arts, and to spaces of social liberation, including Fire Island, as well as his use of child's play, theatricality, and "Camp" sensibilities in correspondences and picture books to work through feelings of queer shame and social incoherence. It reads his creative process in dialogue with sociological writing on the creativity of stigmatized individuals, queer theories of time and space, and psychoanalytic writings on the "creative personality." Sendak harnessed a stigmatized subjectivity to create messages that spoke to those disenchanted with the homogenous, middle-class ideals of midcentury America. Five: Inside Out: Processing the AIDS Crisis and Holocaust Memory Through the Romantic Child chapter abstractChapter 5 focuses on Sendak's life and work in the years following his move to Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1972, exploring how notions of "inside"' and "outside" intensified in his creative vision. As late twentieth-century Jews became, generally speaking, more enfranchised in middle-class America and were increasingly essentialized as complacent beneficiaries of "White privilege," anxiety about the need to preserve Jewish distinctiveness increased. Meanwhile, America institutionalized Holocaust memory and became more comfortable with Old World nostalgia. Mainstream culture in the 1980s also retreated from social liberation movements, empowering homophobia and social conservatism. Considering these contextual shifts, this chapter studies the aging Sendak's creative handling of boundary violations and "unnatural," death-infused relations, including visual mergers of the Holocaust with the AIDS crisis. It asks how he reconciled a political calling he felt during that crisis, which took many of his loved ones, with an impulse to turn inward. Conclusion: Conclusion: A Garden on the Edge of the World chapter abstractThis section reflects broadly on social and cultural influences that shaped Sendak's art, as well as on his legacy as a critic of collectively imposed simplifications of childhood. It connects the concerns of his art to contemporary creative representations of childhood, as well as to enduring social inequities. Childhood continues to operate as a cultural site contributing to definitions of deviance, as well as to the inclusion and exclusion of various minority populations, including Black Americans. Sendak celebrated the sensitivity, ferocity, and playful liminality of childhood, cultivating his own "inner child" as a position from which to articulate the complexity of a displaced queer subjectivity in a displaced immigrant family unit, as well as the dangers of puritanism and social coercion in the public sphere.

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Book SynopsisWithin the broad contours of Islamic traditions, Muslims are enjoined to fast during the month of Ramadan, they are invited to a disciplined practice of prayer, and they are offered the Quran as the divine revelation in the most beautiful verbal form. But what happens if Muslims choose not to fast, or give up prayer, or if the Quran's beauty seems inaccessible? When Muslims do not take up the path of piety, what happens to their relationships with more devout Muslims who are neighbors, friends, and kin? Between Muslims provides an ethnographic account of Iraqi Kurdish Muslims who turn away from devotional piety yet remain intimately engaged with Islamic traditions and with other Muslims. Andrew Bush offers a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, rejecting simple stereotypes about ethnic or sectarian identities. Integrating textual analysis of poetry, sermons, and Islamic history into accounts of everyday life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims illuminates the interplay of attraction and aversion to Islam among ordinary Muslims.Trade Review"A finely nuanced study about the impossibility of sequestering what is religious from what is not. In exemplary fashion, Andrew Bush shows us how the categories with which we work—religion, atheism, or secularism—are insufficient to understand the simultaneously sacred and profane world of everyday life."—Faisal Devji, Oxford University"Andrew Bush has written a remarkable book that makes highly original contributions to the anthropology of religion as well as Kurdish studies. There is no other book quite like this. Approaching Kurdish society through its poetics, he has grasped important insights into the ambiguities of everyday ethics underlying the social reality of contemporary Kurdistan."—Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University"Written with a scholar's rigor and a poet's grace, Between Muslims depicts textures of Islamic tradition rarely discussed in the literature. Fiercely independent in its approach to theorizing Muslim life, this deeply-layered monograph is a must-read for scholars in anthropology, religious studies, and beyond."—Noah Salomon, Carleton College"A refreshing departure from the focus on nationalist identity in studies of Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims is a beautifully written and original work on the dynamics of Islamic traditions. Andrew Bush subtly explores how 'fractures of difference' are lived in everyday intimate relationships."—Sara Pursley, New York University"[G]roundbreaking and innovative... Between Muslims holds up as an accessible and eloquent account of social dynamics in contemporary Iraqi Kurdistan."—Edith Szanto, Journal of the American Academy of Religion"A nuanced reflection on how Muslims inhabit lukewarm attitudes toward piety in contexts suffused with piety. [Between Muslims] is also an elegant exploration of Kurdish poetry and the ways it animates contemporary Kurds' self-expression."—Susan MacDougall, Ethnos"Between Muslims is a major contribution to scholarshipon the importance of multiple ways of being Islamic."—Jeremy F. Walton, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"This beautifully written book explores a number of contradictions among those who have 'turned away from piety' and yet do not renounce Islam, but seek to know the 'beloved' in Iraqi Kurdistan. Through an insightful analysis of mystical poetry, Bush additionally demonstrates how the pious and those who have turned away from piety negotiate desire, understand apostasy, and relate to each other across different ranges of piety through patience and acts of 'holding back.'"—The Association of Middle East Anthropology Book Award Committee"The unique positionality of his subjects allows Bush to offer a valuable modus vivendi to the great 'text vs. lived experience' debate in the academy: his approach necessarily requires an engagement with text, but not as objects which naturally unfold according to their own purposes (as is often the case in our deliberations about Islam) but rather as objects continuously transformed in the process of being made meaningful to an individual's experience of the world, which itself cannot be extricated from its relationship with others. This refreshinglyunmodern emphasis on relationality (instead of isolated self-determining subjects) permeates the entirety of his study, focused as it is on the life-worlds that emergebetweenMuslims."—Rushain Abbasi, MarginaliaTable of ContentsIntroduction: Fieldwork in Kurdistan: Islamic Traditions, Ordinary Relationships, and a Paradox 1. Quran and Zoroaster: Attraction and Authority in Muslim Ethics 2. Christians, Kafirs, and Nationalists in Kurdish Poetry 3. Mystical Desire, Ordinary Desire: Love, Friendship, and Kinship 4. Separating Faith and Kufir in an Islamic Society 5. Pleasure Beyond Piety: Religious Difference in Domestic Space Epilogue: "Dear Reader!"

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Book SynopsisThe Taliban made piety a business of the state, and thereby intervened in the daily lives and social interactions of Afghan women. Pious Peripheries examines women's resistance through groundbreaking fieldwork at a women's shelter in Kabul, home to runaway wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of the Taliban. Whether running to seek marriage or divorce, enduring or escaping abuse, or even accused of singing sexually explicit songs in public, "promiscuous" women challenge the status quo—and once marked as promiscuous, women have few resources. This book provides a window into the everyday struggles of Afghan women as they develop new ways to challenge historical patriarchal practices. Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi explores how women negotiate gendered power mechanisms, notably those of Islam and Pashtunwali. Sometimes defined as an honor code, Pashtunwali is a discursive and material practice that women embody through praying, fasting, oral and written poetry, and participation in rituals of hospitality and refuge. In taking ownership of Pashtunwali and Islamic knowledge, in both textual and oral forms, women create a new supportive community, finding friendship and solidarity in the margins of Afghan society. So doing, these women redefine the meanings of equality, honor, piety, and promiscuity in Afghanistan.Trade Review"Pious Peripheries brings the reader into a diverse and opinionated world of Afghan women thrown together only because they all refused to abide by gendered social norms. Sonia Ahsan's willingness to step aside and allow these remarkable women to speak for themselves is a tremendous strength." -- Thomas Barfield * Boston University *"The extraordinary achievement of Pious Peripheries lies in Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's astute explanation of how Afghan women exercise agency despite their subjugation to often brutal male authority. In this stunning ethnography, she skillfully shows how courageous women navigate the dynamics of piety and promiscuity to achieve seemingly inaccessible freedoms." -- Michael Herzfeld * Harvard University *"Pious Peripheries offers a compelling challenge to the idea that Afghan women need 'saving.' Via a highly original and intrepid ethnography, Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi reveals how, from the margins of Afghan society, a community of formidable women is fashioning their own distinctive claims about Islam, Pashtun identity, sexuality, and the state." -- Robert D. Crews * Stanford University *"Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's Pious Peripheries disrupts conventional categories of piety and secularism to bring to light the immense resourcefulness of Afghan women living at society's margins. Erudite and deeply empathic, with lucid vignettes that will stick in your memory, this is a must-read for anyone interested in feminism, Islam, and the tormented history of Afghanistan." -- Julie Billaud * Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies *"Boldly and poetically defying patriarchy, the runaway women of Pious Peripheries become the surprising harbingers of an emancipatory politics in war-torn Afghanistan. Immortalized by Sonia Ahsan-Tirmizi's brave and soulfully crafted ethnography, these women's nomadic existence shatters myopic notions of religious identity and expands our sense of where reworlding comes from." -- João Biehl * Princeton University *"For practicing traditionally male-ascribed roles of hospitality, refuge, guest hosting, justice, friendship, love, and courage, Ahsan describes the women (through the Pashto poetic tradition of landay) as using their agentive action to reimagine what is legitimate and authorized and what could be. Most important, these women demonstrate that promiscuity is not the opposite of piety or morality but the potential basis for constructing new and different worlds for women. Recommended." -- B. Tavakolian * CHOICE *"Pious Peripheries is the model of engaged scholarship based on ethnographic research among marginalized groups... The diverse experiences of these runaway women reveal the confluence of concerns about subtle feminist and religious expressions and their yearning to reinvent a new sense of belonging inside the shelter system." -- Joseph Tse-Hei Lee * Acta Via Serica *

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Book SynopsisLess and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding their full participation in public life, bringing their arguments all the way to the Supreme Court. The law is on their side, but that doesn't mean that their attempts are not met with suspicion or outright hostility. In Our Non-Christian Nation, Jay Wexler travels the country to engage the non-Christians who have called on us to maintain our ideals of inclusivity and diversity. With his characteristic sympathy and humor, he introduces us to the Summum and their Seven Aphorisms, a Wiccan priestess who would deck her City Hall with a pagan holiday wreath, and other determined champions of free religious expression. As Wexler reminds us, anyone who cares about pluralism, equality, and fairness should support a public square filled with a variety of religious and nonreligious voices. The stakes are nothing short of long-term social peace.Trade Review"Timely, trenchant, and tremendously engaging, Our Non-Christian Nation is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary battles over religion's role in our national politics and culture." -- Phil Zuckerman * author of Living the Secular Life *"In this brilliantly erudite and hugely entertaining romp through recent religious and legal history, Jay Wexler shows why, as our country becomes more religiously diverse, non-Christians need to get their voices heard and Christians need to help repair the wall between church and state. A marvelous read." -- Michael Shermer * Skeptic magazine *"What would it mean to take seriously the idea of religious diversity in the public sphere? Jay Wexler tells the stories of Wiccans, Muslims, and other religious and non-religious groups outside the mainstream who show what existing constitutional doctrine means in practice. The picture he paints provokes us to think differently about what that doctrine should be." -- Mark Tushnet * Harvard Law School *"In this fine book, Jay Wexler urges humanists, atheists, Satanists, and members of minority religious traditions to take advantage of a fascinating new phenomenon: the opening of public space to a variety of beliefs and institutions. His compelling account of 'belief' in public life will be of interest to the deeply religious as well as those who cringe at the very thought of religion. I highly recommend it." -- Anthony B. Pinn * author of Humanism: Essays on Race, Religion and Cultural Production *"A zesty, opinionated assessment of how non-Christians should actually behave....With curiosity and openness, Wexler performs the action that he advocates: that is, making heard a 'cacophony' of voices in public life so that different viewpoints get brought to the fore." -- Dan Friedman * Los Angeles Review of Books *"A fascinating read, and a wonderfully hopeful one...For anyone who feels marginalized as a pagan, nonbeliever, or just not a Christian, it's a manifesto for effective and often hilarious resistance." -- Houston Chronicle"Wexler...has made a timely, at times funny, and compelling piece of reportage looking at a variety of religious groups, as well as a strong argument for the importance of a pluralistic society." -- The Boston Globe"[T]his book was written for the general public, which often struggles to understand the jurisprudence surrounding religious freedom. Even professors of religious studies often need help in this area....Wexler's writing makes this book ideal for getting undergraduates interested in these issues." -- Joseph Laycock * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"[An] artfully presented, quite accessible, guide to major legal issues faced by minority faiths in America...recommended for all interested in such topics." -- James T. Richardson * Nova Religio *"Wexler's greatest strength is his ability to describe current case law in readily digestible terms, making his work an ideal resource for undergraduates interested in religion and American politics. . .[T]his work can serve as an ideal entry point into important classroom conversations regarding the place of religions, especially minorities, in American law, as well as how both public and legal discourses have shaped the role of religion in American life." -- Savannah Finver * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis chapter presents the main themes, issues, and arguments of the book. After an opening vignette describing the efforts of the Satanic Temple to erect a veterans monument in a small Minnesota town, the chapter introduces the First Amendment, particularly the Establishment Clause and the concept of separation of church and state as set out by the Supreme Court. It traces demographic changes in the country's religious makeup that have rendered the nation far less Christian and more secular than at previous times in its history. After a discussion of the issue of defining religion, the chapter sets forth the book's primary argument—namely, that a religiously diverse public square is preferable to one dominated by Christianity. One: Mummies, Monuments, and Monotheism: Religious Displays as Government Speech chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the constitutional doctrine of government speech under the First Amendment as it relates to the erection of religious monuments on public property. It does so, first, by describing and evaluating cases concerning the constitutionality of various Ten Commandments monuments under the Establishment Clause, and particularly the case of Van Orden v. Perry, which upheld such a monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. The chapter goes on to discuss the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the small religious group known as the Summum, located in Salt Lake City, to have a Utah town erect a monument to its "Seven Aphorisms" in a park next to the community's Ten Commandments monument. The author's trip to visit the Summum and understand its mummification practices is described. Two: Pagans, Pentacles, and Pluralism: Religious Displays in the Public Forum chapter abstractThis chapter contrasts the government speech doctrine discussed in chapter 1 with the more minority-friendly First Amendment free speech doctrine known as the designated public forum. Under this doctrine, if the government designates a part of its property for private speech, including religious speech, it may not exclude speech on the basis of the viewpoint that is expressed by that speech. After explaining the doctrine, the chapter describes the successful efforts of Pagans and Wiccans, under the leadership of Wiccan priestess Selena Fox and through litigation brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to get the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow Pagans buried in national cemeteries to have pentacles displayed on their headstones. The chapter also describes the author's visit to Fox's Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin to participate in a Veterans Day event. Three: Secularism, Statehouses, and School Boards: Prayers and Invocations before Government Bodies chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the historical practice of prayer-giving before legislatures and other government bodies, as well as the Supreme Court's treatment of the practice in, most recently, the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway. Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the Court has held that legislative prayer and other religious invocations before government bodies are constitutional so long as the government has a policy of antidiscrimination—i.e., it will not discriminate on the basis of religion when inviting or allowing people to pray before meetings. The chapter investigates specifically the invocation given before the monthly town meeting of the Town of Greece (New York) by an Atheist who had previously sued the town unsuccessfully. The author's trip to witness this invocation is described. Four: The Satanic Temple: Taking It to a Whole 'Nother Level chapter abstractThis chapter takes an in-depth look at the key player in the phenomenon described in the book, namely the Satanic Temple. The chapter provides a brief history of Satanism, including a discussion of the Romantic Satanists, a literary movement in the eighteenth century that was the first to recover the symbol of Satan as a positive figure. The chapter also discusses the rise of the Church of Satan in the Bay Area in the 1960s, as well as the so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980s, in which people were wrongly accused of crimes committed in the name of Satan. The chapter then relates the history and doctrine of the Satanic Temple and describes its efforts to give legislative invocations and place monuments on public property (including its nine-foot-tall bronze monument to Baphomet). Five: Muslims, Money, and Middle Schools: Government Funding of Religion chapter abstractThis chapter investigates the issue of government funding of religion. After a brief foray into the Establishment Clause in this area, including a discussion of the important voucher school case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the chapter describes how some minority religious groups such as the Unification Church and the Church of Scientology have received public funding for their programs. The chapter also relates how Christian legislators in several states have objected to the inclusion of Islamic schools in their proposed voucher programs and then investigates these Islamic schools through the author's trip to the Al-Iman School in North Carolina. Six: Atheists, the Antichrist, and After-School Clubs: Religious Activities in the Public Schools chapter abstractThis chapter concerns the activities of religious groups in the public schools, one of the most controversial issues in church-state law, given the importance of these schools to the formation of future citizens. At the outset, the chapter explains the First Amendment law governing this area, including cases about teaching alternatives to evolution in the biology curriculum. Next, the chapter examines a series of cases in which the Supreme Court has held that if public schools open their facilities to after-school clubs, they may not exclude religious clubs, such as Good News Clubs, from using those facilities. After laying out the law, the chapter then examines efforts by Atheists, the Satanic Temple, and others to distribute religious literature and to start their own after-school clubs in the public schools. Conclusion: Conclusion chapter abstractThe concluding chapter begins with a brief recap of the four key descriptive points that the book has advanced and then proceeds to argue that the movement to increase minority participation in American public life is one that should be celebrated and continued. Specifically, the chapter argues that a religiously cacophonous public square is preferable to an entirely Christian one because it is more consistent with American ideals of free expression and diversity of ideas as enshrined in the First Amendment, because it may promote a more educated citizenry with regard to religion, and because this improved education may result in greater social peace. The chapter also considers potential counter-arguments and pitfalls of encouraging an increased role for religion in the public square, including the possibility that anti-liberal or parody organizations will seek to participate in public life.

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Book SynopsisAround the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesmen. Primitivism—the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called "primitive," non-Western peoples who were also subjugated and denigrated—was a powerful artistic critique of the modern world and was adopted by Jewish writers and artists to explore the urgent questions surrounding their own identity and status in Europe as insiders and outsiders. Jewish primitivism found expression in a variety of forms in Yiddish, Hebrew, and German literature, photography, and graphic art, including in the work of figures such as Franz Kafka, Y.L. Peretz, S. An-sky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Moï Ver. In Jewish Primitivism, Samuel J. Spinner argues that these and other Jewish modernists developed a distinct primitivist aesthetic that, by locating the savage present within Europe, challenged the idea of the threatening savage other from outside Europe on which much primitivism relied: in Jewish primitivism, the savage is already there. This book offers a new assessment of modern Jewish art and literature and shows how Jewish primitivism troubles the boundary between observer and observed, cultured and "primitive," colonizer and colonized.Trade Review"In this revelatory book, Samuel J. Spinner uncovers the paradoxical primitivist yearnings motivating a generation of Jewish visual artists and writers in Yiddish, German, and Hebrew. What happens when Jewish artists and writers see other Jews as the 'savage' other, as though Picasso's African masks had been carved by his own cousins?" —Gabriella Safran, Stanford University"Jewish Primitivism demonstrates that we cannot understand modern Jewish literature without looking at visual culture. In Samuel J. Spinner's engaging account, looking becomes both a methodological intervention and a narrative focal point. Rejecting parochial analysis, he shows that Jewish primitivism encompasses myriad versions of Jewish modernism and enables a rich analysis of its significance." —Na'ama Rokem, University of Chicago"Jewish Primitivism makes a compelling and truly fresh argument for placing the phenomenon of modernist primitivism practiced by Jewish writers and artists at the center of our attempts to understand the paradoxical position of Jews and Jewish art in 20th-century Europe, and consequently the crises of nation and nationalism—for Jews and non-Jews—that underwrite the upheavals and cataclysms of the period."—Madeleine Cohen, Los Angeles Review of Books"One of the many strengths of Jewish Primitivism is that it raises a diverse set of considerations. Spinner's illuminating study is essential reading for those interested in modernist primitivism, in Yiddish and German Jewish literatures, in the encounter of German Jews with east European Jews, and in Jewish modernism in general."—Ido Ben Harush, H-Judaic"This work is provocative in a good way.... [Jewish Primitivism] includes important discussions of sexism in the Jewish primitivism movement and of how the artists—both Jews and non-Jews—engaged with Orientalism. Recommended."—R. Shapiro, CHOICE"Spinner offers a very compelling—and often moving—account of this aesthetic mode, a study whose value the extensiveness of this review is meant to convey."—Jeffrey A. Grossman, In Geveb"Samuel Spinner's lucidly written new book,Jewish Primitivism, is an exciting new addition to a growing body of scholarship that has aimed to deprovincialize Eastern European Jewish literature through the lens of European literary modernism."—Allison Schacther, Hebrew Studies"Boldly taking on a loaded and fraught category of cultural and literary analysis, Samuel J. Spinner's Jewish Primitivism offers an entirely new model of conducting multilingual comparative analysis.Spinner opens multiple meanings of primitivism: it formed and informed elitist and classist distinctions of the civilized and the uncivilized and found extension in institutions, practices, ideologies of orientalism, and conceptual correlates of exoticism. Spinner also reinvigorates critical scrutiny of primitivism as a concept to tell a hitherto untold story of Jewish modernism, within and beyond the fault lines and permutations of the trilingualism of Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. He undoes and reassembles the central underpinnings of Jewish identities through language, literature, and lived culture. Jewish Primitivism is a model of print cultural studies that acknowledges the coexistence of the written and spoken, of print and oral, of classic and folk."—selection committee for the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in the Germanic Languages and LiteraturesTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Beginnings of Jewish Primitivism: Folklorism and Peretz 2. The Plausibility of Jewish Primitivism 3. The Possibility of Jewish Primitivism: Kafka 4. The Politics of Jewish Primitivism: Else Lasker-Schüler and Uri Zvi Grinberg 5. The Aesthetics of Jewish Primitivism I: Der Nister's Literary Abstraction 6. The Aesthetics of Jewish Primitivism II: Avant-Garde Photography and the Shtetl Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Oldest Guard tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. Though they grew into the backbone of lucrative citrus and wine industries of mandate Palestine and Israel, absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, and became known as the "first wave" (First Aliyah) of Zionist settlement, these communities have been regarded—and disregarded—in the history of Zionism as sites of conservatism, lack of ideology, and resistance to Labor Zionist politics. Treating the "First Aliyah" as a symbol created and deployed only in retrospect, Liora R. Halperin offers a richly textured portrait of commemorative practices between the 1920s and the 1960s. Drawing connections to memory practices in other settler societies, The Oldest Guard demonstrates how private agriculturalists and their advocates in the Zionist center and on the right celebrated and forged the "First Aliyah" past, revealing the centrality of settlement to Zionist collective memory and the politics of Zionist settler "firstness."Trade Review"In this extremely important work on Israeli national memory and periodization, Liora Halperin offers new ways to think about early Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine. Halperin's insightful reading of the first Aliyah colonies unpacks the complex relationship between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Palestinians in the modern state of Israel: a state whose perceptions of its past were, and are, in a constant state of flux." —Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"The Oldest Guard casts new light on not only Israeli history but also key issues in the history of nationalism and colonialism, such as tensions between local and statist identifications, concepts of 'firstness' in national narratives, and settler-colonial memory." —Derek Penslar, Harvard University"Halperin's book is a unique history of Zionist memory in that it does not limit its approach to actors from particular Zionist movements or institutions. The book while nominally focused on the 'First Aliyah' generation is about much more: Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Palestinian agriculturalists, Holocaust survivor and Mizrahi immigrants to the State of Israel after its establishment, and even the history of continued settlement up until today. The book will serve as a fantastic resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies."—Ryan Zohar, Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews"Through descriptions of Purim parades, local museums, and the life of Avraham Shapira, an iconic figure in the First Aliya, Halperin does a brilliant job keeping the reader connected throughout... [The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Path] provides a nuanced image of how perceptions of historical figures shift and transform over time as new generations gain power in shaping the narrative."—Louis A. Fishman, Israel Studies Review"It is this public image [of 'the First Aliya']—and its contradictions—which is the subject of Liora Halperin's excellent book, on the Zionist settler memory culture."—Yair Wallach, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish HistoryTable of Contents0. Introduction: Mother of the Colonies 1. Private Farmers and the Origins of "First Aliyah" Claims-Making 2. Arab Labor and the Rhetoric of Hierarchical Coexistence in Mandate Palestine 3. The Old Guard on Display 4. The Colony and the Village: Constructions of Coexistence after the Nakba 5. Jewish Immigrants and the Politics of Settler "First Ones," 1948–1967 Conclusion: Thinking about the First Aliyah after 1967

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Book SynopsisThe Oldest Guard tells the story of Zionist settler memory in and around the private Jewish agricultural colonies (moshavot) established in late nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine. Though they grew into the backbone of lucrative citrus and wine industries of mandate Palestine and Israel, absorbed tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, and became known as the "first wave" (First Aliyah) of Zionist settlement, these communities have been regarded—and disregarded—in the history of Zionism as sites of conservatism, lack of ideology, and resistance to Labor Zionist politics. Treating the "First Aliyah" as a symbol created and deployed only in retrospect, Liora R. Halperin offers a richly textured portrait of commemorative practices between the 1920s and the 1960s. Drawing connections to memory practices in other settler societies, The Oldest Guard demonstrates how private agriculturalists and their advocates in the Zionist center and on the right celebrated and forged the "First Aliyah" past, revealing the centrality of settlement to Zionist collective memory and the politics of Zionist settler "firstness."Trade Review"In this extremely important work on Israeli national memory and periodization, Liora Halperin offers new ways to think about early Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine. Halperin's insightful reading of the first Aliyah colonies unpacks the complex relationship between Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Palestinians in the modern state of Israel: a state whose perceptions of its past were, and are, in a constant state of flux." —Orit Bashkin, University of Chicago"The Oldest Guard casts new light on not only Israeli history but also key issues in the history of nationalism and colonialism, such as tensions between local and statist identifications, concepts of 'firstness' in national narratives, and settler-colonial memory." —Derek Penslar, Harvard University"Halperin's book is a unique history of Zionist memory in that it does not limit its approach to actors from particular Zionist movements or institutions. The book while nominally focused on the 'First Aliyah' generation is about much more: Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Palestinian agriculturalists, Holocaust survivor and Mizrahi immigrants to the State of Israel after its establishment, and even the history of continued settlement up until today. The book will serve as a fantastic resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies."—Ryan Zohar, Association of Jewish Libraries News and Reviews"Through descriptions of Purim parades, local museums, and the life of Avraham Shapira, an iconic figure in the First Aliya, Halperin does a brilliant job keeping the reader connected throughout... [The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Path] provides a nuanced image of how perceptions of historical figures shift and transform over time as new generations gain power in shaping the narrative."—Louis A. Fishman, Israel Studies Review"It is this public image [of 'the First Aliya']—and its contradictions—which is the subject of Liora Halperin's excellent book, on the Zionist settler memory culture."—Yair Wallach, Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish HistoryTable of Contents0. Introduction: Mother of the Colonies 1. Private Farmers and the Origins of "First Aliyah" Claims-Making 2. Arab Labor and the Rhetoric of Hierarchical Coexistence in Mandate Palestine 3. The Old Guard on Display 4. The Colony and the Village: Constructions of Coexistence after the Nakba 5. Jewish Immigrants and the Politics of Settler "First Ones," 1948–1967 Conclusion: Thinking about the First Aliyah after 1967

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Book SynopsisOn Salafism offers a compelling new understanding of this phenomenon, both its development and contemporary manifestations. Salafism became associated with fundamentalism when the 9/11 Commission used it to explain the terror attacks and has since been connected with the violence of the so-called Islamic State. With this book, Azmi Bishara critically deconstructs claims of continuity between early Islam and modern militancy and makes a counterargument: Salafism is a wholly modern construct informed by specific sociopolitical contexts. Bishara offers a sophisticated account of various movements—such as Wahabbism and Hanbalism—frequently collapsed into simplistic understandings of Salafism. He distinguishes reformist from regressive Salafism, and examines patterns of modernization in the development of contemporary Islamic political movements and associations. In deconstructing the assumptions of linear continuity between traditional and contemporary movements, Bishara details various divergences in both doctrine and context of modern Salafisms, plural. On Salafism is a crucial read for those interested in Islamism, jihadism, and Middle East politics and history.Trade Review"On Salafism is a timely, erudite account of the genealogy of Salafism, covering a broad chronological and geographical scope. Azmi Bishara provides important correctives to recent scholarly approaches to Salafism, and forcefully demonstrates that modern articulations of Salafism are facets of ideological projects, not natural culminations of classical Islamic traditions." —Ahmad Dallal, American University in Cairo"On Salafism covers a subject too often the source of deep misunderstanding. Drawing on comprehensive social science research, Azmi Bishara develops a fully documented history that stuns."—François Burgat, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)"On Salafism unpacks the histories and meanings attributed to the term Salafism as invoked today.... This is a book for those interested in Islamic history, political movements, and theological debate. Recommended."—J. Alkorani, CHOICETable of ContentsChapter 1: What Is Salafism? Chapter 2: On Apostasy Chapter 3: Religious Associations and Political Movements Chapter 4: Wahhabism in Context Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes offers a detailed analysis of an extraordinary figure in the twentieth-century history of Jewish thought, Western philosophy, and the study of religion. Drawing on close readings of Susan Taubes's writings, including her correspondence with Jacob Taubes, scholarly essays, literary compositions, and poems, Elliot R. Wolfson plumbs the depths of the tragic sensibility that shaped her worldview, hovering between the poles of nihilism and hope. By placing Susan Taubes in dialogue with a host of other seminal thinkers, Wolfson illumines how she presciently explored the hypernomian status of Jewish ritual and belief after the Holocaust; the theopolitical challenges of Zionism and the dangers of ethnonationalism; the antitheological theology and gnostic repercussions of Heideggerian thought; the mystical atheism and apophaticism of tragedy in Simone Weil; and the understanding of poetry as the means to face the faceless and to confront the silence of death in the temporal overcoming of time through time. Wolfson delves into the abyss that molded Susan Taubes's mytheological thinking, making a powerful case for the continued relevance of her work to the study of philosophy and religion today.Trade Review"This fascinating book discloses a brilliant portrait of 'a forlorn being,' as Susan Taubes called herself. In letting us eavesdrop on her astonishing thinking, Wolfson writes with a poetic lucidity—and a passion—worthy of his subject."—Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp"Immersing himself in Susan Taubes's texts, Wolfson makes a major contribution to contemporary Jewish thought. Rich, philosophical, and poetic, this book masterfully embeds Susan Taubes's work in a broad network of historical and contemporary thinkers."—Elad Lapidot, University of LilleTable of ContentsIntroduction: Memory and Heeding the Murmuring of the Israelites 1. Ghosts of Judaism and the Serpent Devouring Its Own Tale 2. Zionism and the Sacramental Danger of Nationalism 3. Gnosis and the Covert Theology of Antitheology: Heidegger, Apocalypticism, and Gnosticism 4. Tragedy, Mystical Atheism, and the Apophaticism of Simone Weil 5. Facing the Faceless: Poetic Truth, Temporal Oblivion, and the Silence of Death

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Book SynopsisDespite its pervasive reputation as a place of religious extremes and war, Afghanistan has a complex and varied religious landscape where elements from a broad spectrum of religious belief vie for a place in society. It is also one of the birthplaces of a widely practiced variant of Islam: Sufism. Contemporary analysts suggest that Sufism is on the decline due to war and the ideological hardening that results from societies in conflict. However, in Sufi Civilities, Annika Schmeding argues that this is far from a truthful depiction. Members of Sufi communities have worked as resistance fighters, aid workers, business people, actors, professors, and daily workers in creative and ingenious ways to keep and renew their networks of community support. Based on long-term ethnographic field research among multiple Sufi communities in different urban areas of Afghanistan, the book examines navigational strategies employed by Sufi leaders over the past four decades to weather periods of instability and persecution, showing how they adapted to changing conditions in novel ways that crafted Sufism as a force in the civil sphere. This book offers a rare on-the-ground view into how Sufi leaders react to moments of transition within a highly insecure environment, and how humanity shines through the darkness during times of turmoil.Trade Review"An engaging, compelling, and beautifully-written ethnography that traverses the heterogeneous Sufi sociosphere of contemporary Afghanistan. Schmeding documents, in arresting detail and acute sensitivity, the dexterity of Sufi adepts in creating and maintaining civil communities amidst violence and ruptures. At once profound, riveting, and timely, the book is a vital contribution to the study of religion and civil society."—Ismail Fajrie Alatas, New York University"Sufi Civilities opens the door to a marvelous world of faith that lies hidden in plain sight. Schmeding's path breaking ethnographic account of diverse Sufi communities in contemporary Afghanistan is both new and exciting. Over the past half century they have outlasted every radical political regime that failed to appreciate just how deeply Sufism is embedded in Afghanistan's Islamic culture."—Thomas Barfield, Boston University"Afghan Sufis have been hidden from view by attention to mujahidin, Taliban, and al-Qaida. Through astute anthropological observation, Annika Schmeding shows how Sufis became important players in the contests for religious authority that emerged from the cultural whirligig of a NATO-supported Islamic Republic. This is a major contribution to the study of modern Afghanistan."—Nile Green, University of California, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisA photograph with faint writing on the back. A traveling chess set. A silver pin. In her new memoir, noted scholar and author Susan Rubin Suleiman uses such everyday objects and the memories they evoke to tell the story of her early life as a Holocaust refugee and American immigrant. In this coming-of-age story that probes the intergenerational complexities of immigrant families and the inevitability of loss, Susan looks to her own life as an example of how historical events shape our private lives. After the Nazis marched into Hungary in 1944, five-year old Susan learned to call herself by a Christian name, hiding with false papers in Budapest with her parents. While her relatives in the provinces would be among the 450,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz, Susan's close family survived and even thrived in the years following the war. But when the Communist Party took over Hungary, Susan and her parents emigrated to Chicago by way of Vienna, Paris, Haiti, and New York. In her adult life as a prominent feminist professor, she rarely allowed herself to think about these chapters of her past—but eventually, when she had children of her own, she found herself called back to Budapest, unlocking memories that would change the direction of her scholarship and career. At the center of this richly textured memoir is a little girl who grows up happy despite the traumas of her early years, surrounded by a loving family. As a teenager in the 1950s, she is determined to become "100% American," until a post-college year in Paris leads her to realize that her European roots and Americanness can coexist. At once an intellectual autobiography and a reflection on the nature of memory, identity, and home, Daughter of History invites us to consider how the objects that underpin our lives become gateways to our past.Trade Review"A memoir of heart and soul, of ideas and intimations. On page after page, it reminds us that we think with the objects we love and we love the objects we think with. Compelling, sophisticated, accessible—it's a gift."—Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor, author of Reclaiming Conversation and The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir"Memoir writing, for Susan Rubin Suleiman, is a process of reconciliation. Daughter of History is a compelling journey reconciling intimate memories with the violent history of the twentieth century. The resilience that enables survival is everywhere visible in this story of a vivid writer and groundbreaking scholar who has turned her sharp analytic lens on her own life."—Marianne Hirsch, author of The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust"In exquisitely detailing not only what she can remember but what she can't—including, at one point, her own name—Susan Rubin Suleiman limns history's mark on even her ability to feel. And yet that's not the whole of her story: equally moving is the restorative power of literature. This is marvelous, riveting reading—courageous, insightful and inspiring."—Gish Jen, author of Thank You, Mr. Nixon and The Resisters"Using photographs as the spur to memory, Susan Rubin Suleiman takes us on a journey of 'unforgetting.' Like Proust, she is in search of lost time, and in this beautifully written and psychologically wise book, she tells the story of how she became American. Sentences trail her from the farm outside Budapest where she is left at age 5 while Nazis round up Jews in the city to the high school outside Chicago where she is dropped by a girl she had thought her best friend: If I don't get used to this, I'll die, If you don't want me, I'll do without you, along with her mother's admonition don't look as if you didn't belong here. She is history's fortunate daughter and this is a tale of survival. I read it straight through and then it stayed with me, this remarkable study of what she calls 'history's axe'—because here, in a voice so intimate it is as though she is speaking to a close friend, Suleiman reconnects past and present."—Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice and co-author of Why Does Patriarchy Persist?"Written with insight and vivid detail, Suleiman's memoir encourages us all to consider how the relationship between our personal past and the times and events in which we live helps shape us into who we are now."—Abby Remer, Martha's Vineyard Times"Daughter of History: Traces of an Immigrant Girlhood is an absorbing sequential narrative of [Suleiman's] life. It too uses photographs, which serve as catalysts to trigger memories from childhood."—Eva Fogelman, Moment Magazine"This is a very interesting book which is very readable and its description of life in Hungary during the Holocaust and the long way to real freedom is an important addition to the works that explain the very difficult post Holocaust life of survivors. This title is recommended for every library as it is informative and a pleasure to read."—Michlean Lowy Amir, Association of Jewish Libraries ReviewsTable of ContentsContents and Abstracts

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Book SynopsisWorld War II produced a fundamental shift in modern racial discourse. In the postwar period, racism was situated for the first time at the center of international political life, and race's status as conceptual common sense and a justification for colonial rule was challenged with new intensity. In response to this crisis of race, the UN and UNESCO initiated a project of racial reeducation. This global antiracist campaign was framed by the persecution of Europe's Jews and anchored by UNESCO's epochal 1950 Statement on Race, which redefined the race concept and canonized the midcentury liberal antiracist consensus that continues to shape our present. In this book, Sonali Thakkar tells the story of how UNESCO's race project directly influenced anticolonial thought and made Jewish difference and the Holocaust enduring preoccupations for anticolonial and postcolonial writers. Drawing on UNESCO's rich archival resources and shifting between the scientific, social scientific, literary, and cultural, Thakkar offers new readings of a varied collection of texts from the postcolonial, Jewish, and Black diasporic traditions. Anticolonial thought and postcolonial literature critically recast liberal scientific antiracism, Thakkar argues, and the concepts central to this new moral economy were the medium for postcolonialism's engagement with Jewishness. By recovering these connections, she shows how the midcentury crisis of racial meaning shaped the kinds of solidarities between racialized subjects that are thinkable today.Trade Review"The Reeducation of Raceis a brilliant and original study of liberalism, racial formation, and anticolonial thought. Ambitious, wide-ranging, and provocative, the book brings together fields of study too often siloed, anchored by a virtuoso reading of the UNESCO Statement on Race. Thakkar's confident and lucid voice rethinks race and plasticity forever."—Yogita Goyal, University of California, Los Angeles"Through the unlikely lens of post-World War II UNESCO, this book provides real and really new insight into the attempt to recover a liberal postwar order after the racial horror of World War II, and into the limitations of institutional antiracism in those same years. It will be a landmark contribution to the current effort to articulate the politics of Jewishness with both Black and anticolonial theory. We will be reading it carefully in the years to come."—Jonathan Boyarin, Cornell University"Sonali Thakkar's brilliant first book begins as a mystery of sorts. When and why did the word 'equality' get swapped out of the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, to be replaced by 'educability, plasticity'? Answering that question sheds important light on how the colonialist legacy tainted the liberal anti-racism of the postwar period."—John Plotz, Public BooksTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Reeducation of Race 1. Rupture and Renewal 2. The Racial Residuum 3. Culture and Conversion 4. Reeducation as Repair Coda: The Waning Consensus Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Afterlife of Ottoman Europe examines how Bosnian Muslims navigated the Ottoman and Habsburg domains following the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia Herzegovina after the 1878 Berlin Congress. Prominent members of the Ottoman imperial polity, Bosnian Muslims became minority subjects of Austria-Hungary, developing a relationship with the new authorities in Vienna while transforming their interactions with Istanbul and the rest of the Muslim world. Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular explores the enduring influence of the Ottoman Empire during this period—an influence perpetuated by the efforts of the imperial state from afar, and by its former subjects in Bosnia Herzegovina negotiating their new geopolitical reality. Muslims' endeavors to maintain their prominence and shape their organizations and institutions influenced imperial considerations and policies on occupation, sovereignty, minorities, and migration. This book introduces Ottoman archival sources and draws on Ottoman and Eastern European historiographies to reframe the study of Habsburg Bosnia Herzegovina within broader intellectual and political trends at the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing transregional connections, imperial continuities, and multilayered allegiances, The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe bridges Ottoman, Islamic, Middle Eastern, and Balkan studies. Amzi-Erdoğdular tells the story of Muslims who redefined their place and influence in both empires and the modern world, and argues for the inclusion of Islamic intellectual history within the history of Bosnia Herzegovina and Eastern Europe.Trade Review"Crossing over multiple intellectual networks and travel routes, Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular opens an expansive view of the emerging debates between the late Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Taking us through Sarajevo, Istanbul, Vienna, and many surprising stops along the way, her outstanding analysis contributes insights about overlapping allegiances and transimperial notions of sovereignty that will resonate with scholars well beyond Balkan history."—Edin Hajdarpasic, Loyola University Chicago"Never before has a study of the Habsburg period in Bosnia Herzegovina placed Bosnian Muslim agency and loyalties to both the Habsburg and Ottoman empires at the center of its analysis. Centering Ottoman sources, this pathbreaking work shows that Bosnia did not 'stop being Ottoman' in 1878. Under Habsburg rule, Bosnian Muslims continued to appeal to Ottoman authority and developed a form of Muslim modernity that outlasted both empires."—Maureen Healy, Lewis & Clark College"Few works have been able to scrutinize empire's influence on the modern world with the rigor, focus and brilliance displayed in this remarkable monograph. Offering a thoroughly researched case study of the afterlife of Ottoman Bosnia, it provides a model for how to think about the lasting effects of the old empires and will prove indispensable not only to historians of the Balkans, but to anyone interested in modern Europe and its relationship to the world around it."—Mark Mazower, Columbia UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Diplomacies of Separation 2. Migration: Those Who Left 3. Hijra: Views and Debates on Migration 4. Competing Empires 5. Negotiating Imperial Ties: Mobilization and Politics 6. Allegiances and Final Separation Epilogue: Alternative Muslim Modernities

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Book SynopsisAfter the trauma of mass violence and massive population movements around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, both new nation states faced the enormous challenge of creating new national narratives, symbols, and histories, as well as a new framework for their political life. While leadership in India claimed the anti-colonial movement, Gandhi, and a civilizational legacy in the subcontinent, the new political elite in Pakistan were faced with a more complex task: to carve out a separate and distinct Muslim history and political tradition from a millennium long history of cultural and religious interaction, mixing, and coexistence. Drawing on a rich archive of diverse sources, Ali Qasmi traces the complex development of ideas of citizenship and national belonging in the postcolonial Muslim state, offering a nuanced and sweeping history of the country's formative period. Qasmi paints a rich picture of the long, arduous, and often conflict-ridden process of writing a democratic constitution of Pakistan, while simultaneously narrating the invention of a range of new rituals of state—such as the exact color of the flag, the precise date of birth of the national poet of Pakistan, and the observation of Eid as a "national festival"—providing an illuminating analysis of the practices of being Pakistani, and a new portrait of Muslim history in the subcontinent.Trade Review"Complementing the burgeoning scholarly literature on citizenship, Qasmi's insightful and erudite book foregrounds Pakistan's efforts to frame a conception of citizenship through a range of symbolic trappings of national sovereignty such as the anthem, archives, flag, museums and much more. Based on extensive research in the infamously inaccessible national archives, he demonstrates the myriad contestations that continue to shape conceptions of citizenship in post-colonial Pakistan. Notable in this regard is his revealing study of the reasons for the perennial controversy between the state and the ulema over moon sighting to mark the end of the Muslim month of fasting. A must read for students, scholars and anyone interested in the evolution of citizenship in South Asia, this is an especially welcome addition to the historical scholarship on Pakistan."—Ayesha Jalal, Tufts University"Embedding important legal and political decisions about the meaning of sovereignty within the lively debates in civil society that prompted, shaped, and defined them, Qasmi has written one of the liveliest cultural and conceptual histories of Pakistan to date."—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford"Combining theory with empirical 'hard evidence', ...Qaum, Mulk, Sultanatrepresents a veritable game changer in terms of bringing Pakistani developments to bear on wider global theoretical debates, and in the process relocating Pakistan to the heart—rather than languishing on the side-lines—of such discussions."—Sarah Ansari, Bloomsbury PakistanTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Noah's Ark? The Making of Pakistan as a Homeland for Muslim Nationals 2. Quilting Islam: Pakistan as an Islamic Republic 3. Making the State National: Symbols, Flag, and Anthem 4. Over the Moon:Ulema, State, and Authority in Pakistan 5. Scripting the National Time and Space: Archive, Calendar, Roads, and Museums Postscript: A New Beginning - My Fellow Countrymen Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAfter the trauma of mass violence and massive population movements around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, both new nation states faced the enormous challenge of creating new national narratives, symbols, and histories, as well as a new framework for their political life. While leadership in India claimed the anti-colonial movement, Gandhi, and a civilizational legacy in the subcontinent, the new political elite in Pakistan were faced with a more complex task: to carve out a separate and distinct Muslim history and political tradition from a millennium long history of cultural and religious interaction, mixing, and coexistence. Drawing on a rich archive of diverse sources, Ali Qasmi traces the complex development of ideas of citizenship and national belonging in the postcolonial Muslim state, offering a nuanced and sweeping history of the country's formative period. Qasmi paints a rich picture of the long, arduous, and often conflict-ridden process of writing a democratic constitution of Pakistan, while simultaneously narrating the invention of a range of new rituals of state—such as the exact color of the flag, the precise date of birth of the national poet of Pakistan, and the observation of Eid as a "national festival"—providing an illuminating analysis of the practices of being Pakistani, and a new portrait of Muslim history in the subcontinent.Trade Review"Complementing the burgeoning scholarly literature on citizenship, Qasmi's insightful and erudite book foregrounds Pakistan's efforts to frame a conception of citizenship through a range of symbolic trappings of national sovereignty such as the anthem, archives, flag, museums and much more. Based on extensive research in the infamously inaccessible national archives, he demonstrates the myriad contestations that continue to shape conceptions of citizenship in post-colonial Pakistan. Notable in this regard is his revealing study of the reasons for the perennial controversy between the state and the ulema over moon sighting to mark the end of the Muslim month of fasting. A must read for students, scholars and anyone interested in the evolution of citizenship in South Asia, this is an especially welcome addition to the historical scholarship on Pakistan."—Ayesha Jalal, Tufts University"Embedding important legal and political decisions about the meaning of sovereignty within the lively debates in civil society that prompted, shaped, and defined them, Qasmi has written one of the liveliest cultural and conceptual histories of Pakistan to date."—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford"Combining theory with empirical 'hard evidence', ...Qaum, Mulk, Sultanatrepresents a veritable game changer in terms of bringing Pakistani developments to bear on wider global theoretical debates, and in the process relocating Pakistan to the heart—rather than languishing on the side-lines—of such discussions."—Sarah Ansari, Bloomsbury PakistanTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Noah's Ark? The Making of Pakistan as a Homeland for Muslim Nationals 2. Quilting Islam: Pakistan as an Islamic Republic 3. Making the State National: Symbols, Flag, and Anthem 4. Over the Moon:Ulema, State, and Authority in Pakistan 5. Scripting the National Time and Space: Archive, Calendar, Roads, and Museums Postscript: A New Beginning - My Fellow Countrymen Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisNew York, Washington, Madrid, London and now Paris Ð the list of Western cities targeted by radical Islamic terrorists waging global jihad continues to grow. Does this extreme violence committed in the name of Islam point to a fundamental enmity between the Muslim faith and the West? In this compelling essay, leading scholar of Islam Tamara Sonn argues that whilst the West has many enemies among Muslims, it is politics not religion that informs their grievances. The longer these demands remain frustrated, the more violence has escalated and recruitment to groups like Islamic State has increased. Far from quelling the spread of Islamic extremism, Western military intervention has helped to turn nationalist movements into radical terrorist groups with international agendas. Islam, Sonn concludes, is not the problem, just as war is not the solution.Trade Review“It is no surprise that this lucid and insightful treatment of such a fraught topic should come from none other than Tamara Sonn, one of the leading scholars of Islam today. The author subjects some of the most pervasive stereotypes of Muslims current today - especially their alleged proclivity for violence - to trenchant analysis and confronts lurid depictions of Islam with sober facts. The result is a highly accessible and valuable study that compellingly undermines the all-too-common view that ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are at war with one another.” Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University "Tamara Sonn's new book dispels the myths that portray Islam as inherently violent and antagonistic toward the West. She offers a compelling response and an essential antidote to the crude caricatures of Islam that pervade our post-9/11 world." Todd Green, Luther College, author of The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West “Sonn’s excellent analysis introduces the reader to the voices of mainstream Muslims who speak out against terrorism; voices that tend to be drowned in the public discourse. Sonn convincingly argues that common grievances among Muslims should not be confused with common religious beliefs. This incisive little book is a reminder that politics, and not religion, is the cause of grievances that leads some to engage in terrorism.” Nelly Lahoud, Institute for Strategic Studies-Middle East “A concise but remarkably comprehensive analysis of a major element in contemporary global affairs - the relations between Islam and the West. Sonn’s thorough knowledge of both mainstream and extremist Muslim thought and movements gives a depth to this study that goes well beyond the usual coverage of this significant subject.” John O. Voll, Professor Emeritus of Islamic History, Georgetown University “Policymakers, government leaders, media pundits, terrorism experts and terrorists alike, as well as militant Muslim and Christian preachers continue to speak of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and the West or the Islamic threat. In Is Islam and Enemy of the West? Tamara Sonn, a distinguished expert on Islam and Muslim politics, addresses these concerns head-on in a major book that combines an impressive range of scholarship with an accessible and engaging style.” John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam and The Future of Islam. “Tamara Sonn’s new book, Is Islam an Enemy of the West?, deserves a wide readership - and particularly by those with influence but little knowledge of Islam. If the old saw that the truth will set you free has any resonance, readers will find an example of it here.” Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell and professor of government and public policy"Sonn's book has many virtues. Writing clearly and effectively, Sonn shows her impressive knowledge about Islam and politics. This book will help policymakers as well as ordinary citizens to break their misunderstanding about Islam....Overall, this book offers a very timely and important contribution to understanding the current status of Islam in the West. Given rising intolerance and misunderstanding toward Islam around the world, I highly recommend this book."H-Net Reviews

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Book SynopsisNew York, Washington, Madrid, London and now Paris Ð the list of Western cities targeted by radical Islamic terrorists waging global jihad continues to grow. Does this extreme violence committed in the name of Islam point to a fundamental enmity between the Muslim faith and the West? In this compelling essay, leading scholar of Islam Tamara Sonn argues that whilst the West has many enemies among Muslims, it is politics not religion that informs their grievances. The longer these demands remain frustrated, the more violence has escalated and recruitment to groups like Islamic State has increased. Far from quelling the spread of Islamic extremism, Western military intervention has helped to turn nationalist movements into radical terrorist groups with international agendas. Islam, Sonn concludes, is not the problem, just as war is not the solution.Trade Review“It is no surprise that this lucid and insightful treatment of such a fraught topic should come from none other than Tamara Sonn, one of the leading scholars of Islam today. The author subjects some of the most pervasive stereotypes of Muslims current today - especially their alleged proclivity for violence - to trenchant analysis and confronts lurid depictions of Islam with sober facts. The result is a highly accessible and valuable study that compellingly undermines the all-too-common view that ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are at war with one another.” Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University "Tamara Sonn's new book dispels the myths that portray Islam as inherently violent and antagonistic toward the West. She offers a compelling response and an essential antidote to the crude caricatures of Islam that pervade our post-9/11 world." Todd Green, Luther College, author of The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West “Sonn’s excellent analysis introduces the reader to the voices of mainstream Muslims who speak out against terrorism; voices that tend to be drowned in the public discourse. Sonn convincingly argues that common grievances among Muslims should not be confused with common religious beliefs. This incisive little book is a reminder that politics, and not religion, is the cause of grievances that leads some to engage in terrorism.” Nelly Lahoud, Institute for Strategic Studies-Middle East “A concise but remarkably comprehensive analysis of a major element in contemporary global affairs - the relations between Islam and the West. Sonn’s thorough knowledge of both mainstream and extremist Muslim thought and movements gives a depth to this study that goes well beyond the usual coverage of this significant subject.” John O. Voll, Professor Emeritus of Islamic History, Georgetown University “Policymakers, government leaders, media pundits, terrorism experts and terrorists alike, as well as militant Muslim and Christian preachers continue to speak of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between Islam and the West or the Islamic threat. In Is Islam and Enemy of the West? Tamara Sonn, a distinguished expert on Islam and Muslim politics, addresses these concerns head-on in a major book that combines an impressive range of scholarship with an accessible and engaging style.” John L. Esposito, University Professor, Georgetown University and author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam and The Future of Islam. “Tamara Sonn’s new book, Is Islam an Enemy of the West?, deserves a wide readership - and particularly by those with influence but little knowledge of Islam. If the old saw that the truth will set you free has any resonance, readers will find an example of it here.” Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell and professor of government and public policy"Sonn's book has many virtues. Writing clearly and effectively, Sonn shows her impressive knowledge about Islam and politics. This book will help policymakers as well as ordinary citizens to break their misunderstanding about Islam....Overall, this book offers a very timely and important contribution to understanding the current status of Islam in the West. Given rising intolerance and misunderstanding toward Islam around the world, I highly recommend this book."H-Net Reviews

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Book SynopsisAdonis� influence on Arabic literature has been likened to that of T. S. Eliot in the English-speaking world. Yet alongside this spearheading of a modernist literary revolution, the secular Syrian-born poet is also renowned for his persistent and staunch attacks on despotism across the Arab world. In these conversations with the psychoanalyst Houria Abdelouahed, Adonis brings into sharp relief the latest wave of violence and war to engulf Arabic countries, tracing the cause of ongoing tensions back to the beginnings of Islam itself. Since the death of the prophet Muhammad, Islam has been used as a political and economic weapon, exploiting and reinforcing tribal divisions to aid the pursuit of power. Adonis argues that recent events in the Middle East – from the failures of the Arab Spring to the rise of ISIS and the bloody war in his native Syria – attest to the destructive effects of an Islamic worldview that prohibits any notion of plurality and breeds violence. If there is to be any hope of peace or progress in the Arab world, it is therefore imperative that these mentalities are overcome. In their place, Adonis urges a new spirit of enquiry, embodied in the freedoms to interrogate the past and to question cultural norms. Adonis� penetrating analysis comes at a critical time, offering an alternative path to the cycle of violence that plagues the Arab world today. Trade Review�Today�s most daring and provocative Arab poet.� Edward Said �The Arab world's greatest living poet.� New York Times �Faith is like love, Adonis tells us; it falls within personal experience. Violence and Islam explores a multiplicity of modern interpretations that give rise to forms of faith and forms of barbarity. Adonis, in his powerful secular voice, here again proves why he is one of the most important literary figures of our times.' V.S. NaipaulTable of ContentsForeword A Spring without Swallows The Necessity of Rereading: History and Identity Rethinking the Fundamentals What does the foundational text say? Women and the windings of the Text Beyond Economic and Geopolitical Interests: The Drives The West: Passionately, Madly Art, Myth, Religion Poetry between Language and Precept Beyond Al-Kit b How to Conclude? A Last Word Against essentialism The notion of progress in the Islamic conception of man and the world Glossary Notes

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