NEJS 173b American Jewish Writers-- SPRING 2016
PROF. FISHMAN, OFFICE LOWN 308, , #62065
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, 3:30-4:50
Office hours Tuesdays 10:30-12:30, and by appointment
Fulfills WI (WRITING INTENSIVE) REQUIREMENT
Subject matter explored within this course:
American Jewish fiction presents a panorama of Jewish life from immigration through contemporary times. Through a wide variety of short stories and novels we will explore topics such as tensions between Jewish traditions and secular America, and we will look at transformations in individual and family values.
The course begins with selections from writers who wrote in Yiddish, often recreating in the pages of their fiction an Eastern European environment which was intensely Jewish but which was in a state of conflict with diverse modern movements, such as socialism, nationalism, Zionism, and intellectual secularism. The readings continue with selections depicting the lives and societies of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century, and then move to American Jewish authors who focus on the process of acculturation and assimilation at mid-century. The fiction of the celebrities of American Jewish fiction in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s was characterized by a universalistic orientation which defined the Jew through his/her relationship with gentile Diaspora existence. American Jewish writing won critical prominence because it brought to the American reading public the perspective of marginality: the Jew was presented as an obligatory outsider, an existential hero coping with American society, and/or Jewishness was presented as a theatrical species of ethnic comedy, full of street-wise Jewish humor and peppered with pungent yiddishisms. This literary stance was probably influenced by the fact that until the late 1960s most American Jews assumed assimilation was the irresistible wave of the future, and much of the most celebrated (and notorious) American Jewish fiction focused on thee process of assimilation.
Today, however, one of the most striking features of contemporary American Jewish fiction is its diversity, both literarily and thematically. The most recent selections often turn inward to an exploration of distinctive aspects of the Jewish heritage and tradition—another turns outward to global Jewish experiences. One type of new Jewish writing places Jewish characters, themes, symbols and concerns in locations not previously emphasized in American Jewish writing: Argentina, Alaska, North Africa, and Asia. Another trend features an insider's vision of a bewildering array of diverse Orthodox societies and characters. Many books are distinguished by a fascination with the Jewish past and with definitively Jewish environments--often presented in postmodern garb, or in re-imagined historical or non-historical settings. Children—and now grandchildren—of Holocaust survivors explore the complexities involved in growing up in the shadow of that cataclysm.
New novels also include popular genres such as mysteries and romances. Romances especially have mined the exotic settings offered by biblical, Eastern European, Sephardic, and Orthodox worlds, often in combination with American Jewish settings. In scores of popular novels aspects of Jewish life that earlier in the century might have seemed to most readers to be esoterica have been transformed into exotica instead. Landmarks of Jewish history previously relegated to textbooks have become plot devices in the pages of glossy novels. Israel, both as a separate subject and in combination with other aspects of Jewish history, including the Holocaust, continues to figure prominently in American Jewish fiction, albeit no longer through the romantic glow it had enjoyed earlier. For some American Jewish writers, Israel functions not so much as subject as an evocative setting which often brings together strands of Jewish history and consciousness.
Course requirements:
This course will be conducted in a combination lecture/discussion format. Students will be expected to read all assignments and to come to class prepared to discuss the literature. Two short papers (5 pages) and one longer term paper are required (15-20 pages). The first paper should deal with some aspect of the immigrant transition, as reflected in Jewish literature or with some aspect of Jewish acculturation to American life, as reflected in literature. This paper is due on February 11. The second short paper should deal with critical reception for one book by an American Jewish author, and is due on March 10. The term project is a 15-20 page research/analytical paper. Students must submit a written proposal of their paper topics, which includes a paragraph describing the paper and a preliminary bibliography, on Tuesday, April 5. The research papers will be due on Monday, May 2 at 12 noon.This is a pre-extended deadline and there will be no extensions of this deadline.
If desired a separate graduate discussion section will be arranged for graduate students.
Students with documented learning disabilities or other health issues should inform the professor as soon as possible, and should provide written documentation.
Four-Credit Course (with three hours of class-time per week)
Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for exams, etc.).
Required Reading:
Available from Brandeis Bookstore:
1. Sylvia Barack Fishman, Follow My Footprints: Changing Images of Women in Jewish Literature, stories by Yiddish writers Sholom Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and I. B. Singer (in translation) and by Anzia Yezierska, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick
2. Abraham Cahan, Yekl, and The Imported Bridegroom
3. Bernard Malamud, The Assistant
4. Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammer's Planet
5. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
6. Allegra Goodman, Kaaterskill Falls
7. Philip Roth, The Counterlife
8. Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
9. Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
10. Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases
11. Dara Horn, A Guide for the Perplexed
12. Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life
SCHEDULE OF CLASS MEETINGS, READINGS, AND ASSIGNMENTS
Thursday, January 14--Class Discussion:Introduction to course materials and assignments. Capturing a disappearing world in art and literature. Yiddish writers and their themes and concerns.
Assignment for January 19 and 21: Read stories by Sholom Aleichem, Peretz, and Singer.
Tuesday, January 19 and Thursday January 21: Class Discussion: Capturing a disappearing world in art and literature. Yiddish writers and their themes and concerns.
Assignment for Monday January 26: Read Abraham Cahan, Yekl, and the Imported Bridegroom AND story by Anzia Yezierska.
Tuesday, January 26 and Thursday, January 28, Class discussion: Immigration, dislocation, and reconstruction; adaptation and assimilation—capturing the differences in fictional portrayals.
Assignment for February 2, February 4, February 9, and February 11: Read Bernard Malamud, The Assistant AND Tillie Olsen’s “Tell Me A Riddle”
Tuesday, February 2---Class sees film: “The Jazz Singer,” with Al Jolson (1927)
Thursday February 4, Tuesday, February 9, and Thursday February 11: Class discussion: Beyond religion and race: secularizing Jews with utopian, universalistic dreams.
Thursday February 11, FIRST SHORT PAPER DUE
FEBRUARY 15-19, SPRING BREAK
Assignments for Tuesday February 23 and Thursday February 25: Read Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Monday February 23 and Wednesday February 25, Class Discussion:What price personal freedoms in secular American Jewish society? After the 1960s--Who are the Jews and what is Jewishness in 20th century America?
Assignment for Tuesday, March 1 and Thursday March 3 read:Philip Roth, The Counterlife
Tuesday March 1 and Thursday March 3, Class discussion: A postmodern take on Jewish identity in the United States and Israel. Explorations of the ways in which human beings (including Jews) shape their own lives and the lives of others.
Assignment for Tuesday March 8, read: Cynthia Ozick, “Puttermesser” and assignment for Thursday March 10 read: Grace Paley, “Dreamers in a Dead Language”
Tuesday March 8 and Thursday March 10, class discussion: Cynthia Ozick and Grace Paley as public intellectuals and commentators on American Jewishness.
SECOND SHORT PAPER DUE
Assignment for March 15 and March 17April 1, read Rebecca Goldstein’s The Mind-Body Problem
Tuesday March 15 and Thursday March 17, Class discussion: Intellectual Jews draw on intensive Jewish life, traditions, texts. Struggling with binaries that divide man/woman, mind/body, public/private, religious/secular—feminism and femininity.
Assignment for Tuesday, March 22 and Thursday March 24, read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.
Tuesday, March 22 and Thursday March 24,
Class discussion: Reimagining Jewish history in the “new” Jewish fiction.
Assignment for March 29 and March 31: Read Allegra Goodman, Kaatterskill Falls.
Tuesday March 29 and Thursday March 31 WITH THE AUTHOR ALLEGRA GOODMAN ON TUESDAY MARCH 29, Class discussion:Orthodox Judaism as a subject for nuanced literary portrayals. Rebellions, large and small, in insulated communities.
Assignment for Tuesday April 5 and Thursday April 7, Read Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases.
Tuesday April 5 and Thursday April 7, Class discussion: The “planet of the Jews” in Jewish Diasporas around the world: hard times for the Jews of Argentina.
Assignment for April 12 and April 14, read: Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and Boris Fishman, A Replacement Life
Tuesday, April 5 and Thursday April 7, Class discussion:Beyond Tevye—(1) what if there were no Israel, and the Jews had to go somewhere, so they were sent to—Sitka, Alaska! Police-mystery-genre applied to historical fantasy. AND (2) a new immigration—contemporary Russian-Jewish American writers negotiate a new America and a complicated world.
Assignment for Tuesday, April 19, Read: Dara Horn, A Guide for the Perplexed
Tuesday, April 19 (Last day of class), Class discussion: The Jews and Egypt—history and historical fiction about learning from our past, preserving memories, and how stories of freedom and enslavement continue through modern times.
Students in NEJS 173b have a special opportunity to attend sessions of the Hadassah Brandeis Institute Spring Brown-Bag Supper Seminars on North American Jewish Writers, which will be held on selected Tuesdays, 5:30-7 p.m., at the HBI (Epstein Building).
January 26, Golan Moskowitz—Gendered lenses on 3rd Generation Holocaust Writers
February 9, Lori Harrison-Kahan—Secular Jewish Women Novelists in the Progressive Era
February 23, Kathryn Hellerstein—Yiddish Women Poets, speaking in their own voice
March 8, Chantal Ringuet—Yiddish Women Poets, part II
April 12—Nora Gold, award-winning new novel, Fields of Exile
FRIDAY APRIL 22-FRIDAY APRIL 29. PASSOVER BREAK
Monday, May 2 at 12 noon
PAPERS DUE IN PROF. FISHMAN’S OFFICE BOX