Description
Book SynopsisExplicating one of the most potent and recurring mass-culture fantasies, this book explores Jewish-Christian couplings across a century of popular American literature, theater, film, and television.
Trade ReviewEssential. This richly detailed book on interfaith relationships—specifically between Jews and Christians—fills a real gap in cinema studies. . . Though the title of the book is a play on the 1989 romantic comedy
When Harry Met Sally, Moss examines a truly encyclopedic series of texts, both filmic and literary, and dives deep into the subject, offering dazzling insights on nearly every page. * Choice *
Moss’s argument is a refreshing break from the jeremiads that often accompany analyses of the representation of Jews in popular culture. . . the [questions] addressed by Moss in this work are both interesting and of value to Jews, non-Jews, and students of American Judaism and American religion more broadly conceived. * Reading Religion *
Moss has accomplished a tour de force, and his coupling theory is worth the extended consideration he hopes it will receive…His work will be of interest to media studies, Jewish studies and American studies, to name just a few relevant areas. * Journal for Religion, Film and Media *
[An] extensive, multigenerational, multidisciplinary survey of Jewish-Christian couplings...
Why Harry Met Sally makes an important contribution to film and television history and is a valuable resource insofar as it points to just about every significant American film, Broadway show, and television show engaging the themes of Christian-Jewish coupling and links them to a broader literary history of this theme. * Jewish Historical Studies *
Rich and engrossing…Moss's prodigious and impressive scholarship contributes an extremely important addition to the canon of academic writing on romantic comedy. * Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television *
Moss's infusion of 'coupling theory' into the way interfaith relationships are both presented in popular media and read by audiences is nothing short of brilliant, and should be a methodological tool that all scholars in these fields immediately take up...a must-read for many scholars. * Studies in American Jewish Literature *
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction. Sally’s Orgasm
- Part One. The First Wave: The Mouse-Mountains of Modernity (1905–1934)
- Chapter 1. Disraeli’s Page: Performative Jewishness in the Public Sphere
- Chapter 2. Kafka’s Ape: Literary Modernism, Jewish Animality, and the Crisis of the New Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 3. Abie’s Irish Rose: Immigrant Couplings, Utopian Multiculturalism, and the Early American Film Industry
- Part Two. The Second Wave: Erotic Schlemiels of the Counterculture (1967–1980)
- Chapter 4. Benjamin’s Cross: Israel, New Hollywood, and the Jewish Transgressive (1947–1967)
- Chapter 5. Portnoy’s Monkey: Postwar Literature, Stand-Up Comedy, and the Emergence of the Carnal Jew (1955–1969)
- Chapter 6. Katie’s Typewriter: Hollywood Romance, Historical Rewrite, and the Subversive Sexuality of the Counterculture
- Part Three. The Third Wave: Global Fockers at the Millennium (1993–2007)
- Chapter 7. Spiegelman’s Frog: Coded Jewish Metamorph and Christian Witnessing (1978–1992)
- Chapter 8. Seinfeld’s Mailman: Global Television and the Wandering Sitcom (1993–2000)
- Chapter 9. Gaylord’s Tulip: Fluid and Fluidity at the Millennium (1993–2008)
- Conclusion. Plato’s Retweet
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
