Jewish frontiers : essays on bodies, histories, and identities / Sander L. Gilman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilman, Sander L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish diaspora.

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Post-Zionism.

Jews--Diseases--Genetic aspects.

Multiculturalism.

Jews--Diseases.

Physical Description:

xi, 243 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Summary:

Jewish history has generally been understood as the history of a people displaced from their homeland, and this has played a defining role in how we understand Jewish identity. In this series of interlinked essays, noted critic Sander L. Gilman suggests that we examine Jewish history from a different starting point. Instead of focusing on "diaspora," Gilman reimagines Jewish history as the story of people living on a "frontier" -- a place where all peoples, including Jews, interacted to define themselves and those they encounter in reality or fantasy. Gilman looks at the representation of Jews and Jewishness in film, literature, and history. He addresses a wide range of questions, including: How has the Holocaust been represented in comic films, from Jacob the Liar to Life Is Beautiful? What do fantasies about the Jewish origin of smoking in Europe, debates about Jewish genetic disease, and literary representations from Proust and Kafka to Zadie Smith tell us about the imagination of Jewish identity?

Contents:

Introduction: The Frontier as a Model for Jewish History 1

Part I Representing the Shoah at the Frontier

1. The First Comic Film about the Shoah: Jurek Becker and Cultural Opposition within the GDR 35

2. Is Life Beautiful? Can the Shoah Be Funny? On the Frontier between Acceptable and Unacceptable Representations of the Holocaust in Some Newer and Older Films 65

Part II Diseases and Boundaries

3. Smoking Jews on the Frontier 95

4. A French Frontier: Proust's Nose 111

5. A Dream of Jewishness on the Frontier: Kafka's Tumor and "A Country Doctor" 129

6. Private Knowledge: Jewish Illnesses and the Process of Identity Formation 149

Part III Jewish Bodies on the Multicultural Frontier

7. "We're Not Jews": Imagining Jewish History and Jewish Bodies in Contemporary Multicultural Literature 169.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [207]-238) and index.

ISBN:

0312295324

OCLC:

50292252

Online:

Publisher description