Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"
Benjamin Schreier is a passionately engaged, deeply critical reader of the history of Jewish American literary history. In The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature, he seeks to demystify the intellectual foundations that continue—problematically in his view—to determine the cultural-political interpretive assumptions that shape the field. Schreier argues that a reimagined, more theoretically sophisticated critical consciousness among scholars would elevate Jewish American literature’s current standing in the humanities, where it is either marginalized, ignored, or relegated to a segment of the white Western literary canon.
" * Modern Philology *
"Benjamin Schreier here calls for radical rethinking of the basic ethnographic premise that has shaped Jewish American literary studies. An astute and provocative genealogy of the emergence of the field and its institutional settings, this book asks for much needed theorizing of the concepts of identity that underlie Jewish Studies more broadly. Schreier's passionate and polemical wake-up call will reinvigorate the conversation about Jewish American literature." * Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel Aviv University *
"A bold, bracing examination of Jewish American literature, this book is revelatory. Benjamin Schreier's relentlessly intelligent analysis yields a frequently polemical but impossible-to-dismiss critique that directly questions the fundamental assumptions and premises underwriting an entire field of study." * Dean Franco, Wake Forest University *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. What's the "History" in "Jewish American Literary History" the History Of?
Chapter 1. The History of Jewish American Literary History: "Breakthrough" and the Institutional Rhetoric of Identity
Chapter 2. Before Jewish American Literature
Chapter 3. After Jewish American Literature
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
