The American Experience Through Immigrant Eyes: Jewish-American Literature

Catalog description

This course explores the development of a new American literary tradition, one rooted in and influenced by Jewish textual, cultural, and religious history. Focusing primarily on the late19th and 20th century, and reading works composed in and translated into English, the course traces the many paths to Americanization pursued by American Jews, a diverse and diasporic group. The course examines dialect and multilingualism, ethnic modernism, racial and ethnic difference, immigration, assimilation and religious practice, social mobility, humor, gender and feminism, and Jewish writers’ engagement with history, especially with the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. The course will survey a wide array of genres and media.