The New Jewish American Literary Studies

Introduces readers to the new perspectives, approaches and interpretive possibilities in Jewish American literature that emerged in the twenty-first Century.

This volume is designed for undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars and teachers of Jewish American literature. It will be of interest to the educated lay audience given the timely nature of some of the issues addressed: race, gender, cultural and ethnic hybridity, and the relation of Israel and America.The opening decades of the twenty-first century are distinguished by a newly framed and regenerated outlook of Jewish American literary studies. This volume introduces readers to the new perspectives, new approaches, and widening of interpretive possibilities in Jewish American literature accompanied by the changes of the new millennium. Now that we are over a decade into a new century, the field of Jewish American literary studies has begun to reshape itself in response to a 'new diaspora', a newly defined sense not only of Jewish American literature, but of America, an expansion of new genres, new voices, and new platforms of expression. This book re-evaluates questions of race, feminism, gender, sexuality, orthodoxy, assimilation, identity politics, and historical alienation that shape Jewish American literary studies. Several chapters show the influence of other cultures on the field such as Iranian-American-Jewish writing, Israeli-American, and Latin American literary expression, as well as the impact of Russian emigres.