Description
Book SynopsisIn the last three decades, hundreds of books and essays have been published on women, gender, and Jewish Studies. This burgeoning scholarship has not been adequately theorized, contextualized, or historicized. This book argues that Jewish feminist studies is currently constrained by multiple frames of reference that require re-examination, a self-critical awareness, and a serious reflective inquiry into the models, paradigms, and assumptions that inform, shape, and define this area of academic interest. This book is the first critical analysis of Jewish feminist scholarship, tracing it from its tentative beginnings in the late 1970s to contemporary academic articulations of its disciplinary projects. It focuses on the assumptions, evasions, omissions, inconsistencies, and gaps in this scholarship, and notably the absence of debate, contestation, and interrogation of authoritative articulations of its presumed goals, investments, and priorities. The book teases out implicit thinking abo
Trade ReviewIn her new brilliant book, Esther Fuchs once again demonstrates that she is a dazzling intellect and a courageous thinker. Her critique of current modes of feminist theorizing in Jewish studies is extraordinary, and her rigorous mind demands that we think in more complex ways. Fuchs is a fearless trailblazer, exposing outmoded ways of thinking in order to lead us to more sophisticated and insightful feminist theorizing. -- Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
Jewish Feminism: Framed and Reframed makes an important contribution to the literature. -- Marla Brettschneider, University of New Hampshire
Table of ContentsPrologue
Introduction: Jewish Feminism Framed
1. Jewish Feminist Scholarship: The Liberal Frame
2. Jewish Feminist Theory: The Personal Frame
3. The New Jewish Studies: The Masculinist Frame
4. Women and Holocaust Studies: The Essentialist Frame
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