Inside Higher Education has a very sober account of a panel at the annual Modern Language Association meeting on why English departments tend to ignore American Jewish literature, while spending significant resources on other ethnic literature. Despite its sobriety, the account left me alternatively laughing and shaking my head (and sometimes both: “Jewishness has been associated with Israel, white privilege, colonialism and racism”) at the banal idiocies of modern academia.
One serious point raised in the article is that Holocaust studies dominates the study of Jewish literature. I remember when I was a student at Brandeis, with what was then the top Jewish Studies department in the country, by far the most popular Jewish Studies course, and one of the most popular courses in the entire university, was a course on the history of the Holocaust. It says something disturbing and unhealthy about American Jewish life that for both Jews and non-Jews, a three thousand year old living tradition and culture is so reduced to the horrific events of the mid-twentieth century.
UPDATE: And here’s a cogent comment on the IHE piece from one “Michael Greenspan”:
What most strikes this non-academic is the reasoning with which some of those quoted argue for greater study of Jewish literature. Prof. Cutter points not to great Jewish writers but to Jewish traumas. Prof. Hoffman appears to accept the logic that a group’s “marginal status” decides whether that group’s literature is worthy of study. This attitude — that the greater the group’s perceived success, the less deserving of attention the art produced by members of that group — is remarkably small-minded. And if suffering supplies cachet, no wonder that “Holocaust literature . . . should be so much more present — in literature departments in the United States — than American Jewish fiction and culture.” How could it be otherwise?
Per Son says:
Is it the exclusion from English Departments or others that have lead to Jewish Studies departments at so many institutions?
Just curious.
December 30, 2009, 10:11 amEric Rasmusen says:
What I find most appalling here is not that the top 20 English departments don’t have specialists in Jewish-American literature, a subject of tiny importance, but that they do have specialists in other ethnic literatures. No doubt Asian-American literature, like golf literature or science literature, is a worthy subject of study for someone or other, but to have a specialist in every department is crazy.
December 30, 2009, 10:11 amSteve in Toronto says:
Growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical christen home the works of literature that spoke most deeply to me (with the possible exception of John Updike) were all Jewish Saul Bellow, Mordeci Richler, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth ect. What I found most compelling about the work of these post war Jewish writes was how that dealt was the question of the presence/ absence of God. This question is of course informed by the Holocaust but also by Marx, Freud and Darwin. It’s a shame to see such a rich library reduced to a characture.
Regards
December 30, 2009, 10:20 amSteve in Toronto
Anderson says:
My first reaction is that “postwar American literature” has *been* in no small part “Jewish American literature.”
As Steve says: Bellow, Roth, Mailer? Ginsberg? Heller? Auster?
December 30, 2009, 10:34 amAnderson says:
It says something disturbing and unhealthy about American Jewish life that for both Jews and non-Jews, a three thousand year old living tradition and culture is so reduced to the horrific events of the mid-twentieth century.
Harold Bloom had some characteristically cranky remarks that I can’t seem to google up — something to the effect that he didn’t really need Judaism to be enriched with six million Jesus figures, thank you very much.
December 30, 2009, 10:38 amSean O'Hara says:
What does it say about me that when I see “Jewish American Literature” I immediately think “Asimov, Kornbluth, and Ellison.”
December 30, 2009, 10:47 amMalvolio says:
Really? You think modern literature would be pretty much the same without The Naked And The Dead, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Fixer, Herzog? There’s an open question of whether literature by or about specific groups ought to be studied separately, but if that has been affirmed, Jews should be near the head of the line.
Apropos of nothing much, of the 12 Jewish winners of the Nobel Prize in lit, only two (Singer and Bellow) have been Americans. I put it down to anti-Americanism — Pinter won but Mailer did not? Come on.
On the other hand, Jews have won the Econ Nobel (that is, the “Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences”) at least 22 of the 40 times it has been given. I guess we are good with money.
(Two more things I learned researching this post: Mailer was Jewish but Nabokov was not!)
December 30, 2009, 11:13 amPer Son says:
Just to give a shout out to the Melton Center at The Ohio State University. See http://meltoncenter.osu.edu/. The Melton Center combines the work of scholars in vastly different departments (English, German, Yiddish, Music, Philosophy, Art, History, Political Science, Greek and Latin, Sociology, Hebrew, Law, etc.). It is awesome, because it combines the strengths of all these seperate departments.
Its statement is:
“To develop, promote and support the study, teaching and research of Jewish Studies by faculty and students at the Ohio State University.
To encourage an interest in the study of all aspects of the Jewish experience within the central Ohio community, and to sponsor educational programs for the general public service.
To seek outside funding to encourage the growth of the Jewish Studies programs at The Ohio State University.”
December 30, 2009, 11:22 amBlue says:
The purpose of “ethnic studies” is not to actually study the great works and history of the ethnic group in question. It is to create, sometimes out of whole cloth, a narrative that members of the ethnic group can feel proud of.
There is no need for that creation in Jewish-American literature. Any one of a dozen authors is objectively more important than the entire scope Asian-American literature. At least four are more important than the entire corpus of Latino/Chicano work.
December 30, 2009, 11:28 amSW says:
Rand. :)
December 30, 2009, 11:34 amneurodoc says:
Every school should have a Ruth Wisse, and every student should be as fortunate as my daughter was to have the opportunity to study with Professor Wisse. Alas, that lady is a true rarity, and if there were more of her kind, one wonders how welcome they would be at many schools, especially because she is most definitely not of “progressive” persuasion.
December 30, 2009, 11:35 amjcm says:
When i read the post, the first name i think of was Roth.He is the american writer with the best shot at the Nobel once the anti-American biased secretary of the Academy go on retirement.
December 30, 2009, 11:52 amBut then I think , why only american literature is excluded ? Malamud, Singer, Mailer, Below, Brodsky. Only Singer wrote in yiddish
Why not Kafka, Proust ( two of the three best writers of the XX century , the other being Joyce ,were Jews ) Brod, Joseph Roth, Primo Levi,Babel, Grossman, Pasternak, Maurois, Broch, Schnitzler?
Why not the pillars of postmodernism Derrida, Steiner,Bergson,Freud , Strauss( the anthropologist) and Marx?
Kate says:
Saul Bellow’s Herzog and his final work Ravelstein have been two of the most unforgettable novels that I have ever read. I read Herzog as a freshman (on my own time) in college, and its themes continue to resound within my daily life. That’s great literature. In a purely objective sense, I can’t remember nearly as much from any novels I read in class–as an undergrad I made a point of taking as many African-American Studies and Latino Studies courses as possible because they tended to be extremely easy, and it was all too obvious what the professors were looking for.
As a Gentile growing up in the Deep (Deep) South, I can’t recall ever meeting a Jew before attending college in New England. But that didn’t keep me from absolutely reveling in Jewish-American literature (Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and in a different sense, Allan Bloom) the minute I was exposed to it. J-A lit has enriched my life immensely, and it’s a pity that students don’t get exposed to it in depth because Jews are a) not “people of color”, and b) seem not to have suffered enough racism and social trauma (outside of the Holocaust, that is) to warrant the attention of present-day academia. Not that there should necessarily be a Jewish-American lit expert in every English department, but a bit more balance within the curriculum would, I think, be a great thing.
December 30, 2009, 12:10 pmAnderson says:
Rand. :)
The exception that proves the rule.
December 30, 2009, 12:11 pmPaul Horwitz says:
By way of Jewish American literature, surely we’re forgetting a few great names. What about Updike? Cheever? Hawthorne? Fitzgerald?
Incidentally, I am reminded of one of my favorite lines from Homer Simpson: “Mel Brooks is Jewish??”
December 30, 2009, 12:50 pmMalvolio says:
I don’t know if you could demonstrate that — unless you are willing to claim that the purpose of the Geology Department is to bolster the self-esteem of rocks and the Zoology Department, to cheer up hippopotamuses… hippopotami… uh, hippos.
Certainly I would believe that many, even most, Ethnic Studies departments have devolved into this kind of purile defensiveness, but I don’t think that makes the whole concept untenable. Speaking of purile defensiveness:
It was my understanding there would be no math.
December 30, 2009, 1:26 pmDilan Esper says:
i get pissed when people get accused of anti-semitism merely for criticizing israel, but the flip side of this is some folks’ criticisms of israel are so unfair and one-sided that you really can’t avoid the conclusion that anti-semitism is afoot. and my experience is that there is a fair amount of this in academia. (and, of course, historically, colleges slapped caps on jewish enrollment due to anti-semitism.)
it seems to me, however, that sunlight is the best disinfectant here. if people are interested and agitate for more jewish studies classes and programs, colleges should respond to it.
December 30, 2009, 1:37 pmTwirip says:
Indeed. Although I’d note that it is Jews who have done that reducing.
December 30, 2009, 1:40 pmTwirip says:
I think so.
True enough. After the English there’s a lot of competition for second place.
December 30, 2009, 1:47 pmmonboddo says:
David–I was about to snark about this post, well, because it was by you, but I clicked through to the IHE article, and you’re absolutely right–it’s absurd, and sums up a lot of the idiocies of modern academia. What I found most appalling was the almost-complete absence of interest in literature; the “scholars” never really discussed the actual books, stories, poems they were supposed to teach, and seemed far more focused on where they could fit Jews in their little political schemas. (OK, I also found the notion that many scholars of modern American literature didn’t teach Bellow awful.) How sad!
December 30, 2009, 2:11 pmjcm says:
Kafka was related to the zionist movement leader and died in 1924 , when the little austrian was in jail.By accident , the word he used for the insect is the same the nazis used for Jews. But the Metamorphosis was an intimate drama . His Milena died in Auschwitch . But 20 years after Kafka
December 30, 2009, 3:18 pmProust, was a snob who had to confront reality during the Dreyfuss affair.
So they or their books have no relation with the Shoa.
And its the same for Roth: Portnoy´s complaint, The Professor of Lust and the Dying Animal never mention the Shoa
Dan says:
It seems the question is whether Jewish literature, e.g., Roth and Malamud, will be included in the Post-War Literature class, or the Jewish Literature class.
December 30, 2009, 3:34 pmMalvolio says:
Ah, so you’re a fool. Thanks for the heads-up.
December 30, 2009, 3:35 pmAlex Bensky says:
For my money “The Thin Red Line” is a much better and less self-conscious book than “The Naked and the Dead.” I’ve read a few Mailer novels besides that one and I must be missing something because I’m not sure why they are considered great, as opposed to interesting, literature.
December 30, 2009, 3:46 pmAnderson says:
It seems the question is whether Jewish literature, e.g., Roth and Malamud, will be included in the Post-War Literature class, or the Jewish Literature class.
And apparently, some people think the latter is preferable.
… Of course, what this is REALLY about is academic politics. A separate “Jewish-American literature concentration” creates budget and staffing priorities.
December 30, 2009, 3:55 pmLeo Marvin says:
Doesn’t the fact that so many of the authors mentioned above, Bellow, Roth, Mailer, etc., would be read in generic literature courses (they would, wouldn’t they?) obviate the need to carve out a separate niche? I could see the value of something narrower, i.e., the subset of authors whose themes are explicitly or at least predominantly “Jewishness.” But I fail to see the point of segregating and studying literature just because the authors happen to be Jewish. I’m proud that English students could hardly avoid being exposed to Jewish authors if they tried. I’d think that would be the goal of every ethnic literature program.
December 30, 2009, 3:55 pmMalvolio says:
I think the idea is not (or is not supposed to be) that the author is Jewish, so much as the subject matter is, at least tangentially, Judaism or Jewish culture. I’m guessing that Remains of the Day (written by Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro) is not studied in any Asian Literature department.
December 30, 2009, 4:06 pmLeo Marvin says:
Malvolio, thanks, that probably answers my question. But I got the impression an ethnic literature program is distinct from an ethnic studies program. Is that right? If so, aren’t the programs duplicative?
December 30, 2009, 4:42 pmDilan Esper says:
I think the idea is not (or is not supposed to be) that the author is Jewish, so much as the subject matter is, at least tangentially, Judaism or Jewish culture.
That’s right. It seems to me that in a well-rounded college curriculum, you want students to learn something about the world’s great and enduring cultures, and Jewish culture certainly qualifies.
December 30, 2009, 4:48 pmChrisTS says:
Leo, Anderson, Malvolio, Dylan:
Literature departments might well contribute to an interdisciplinary program in Jewish Studies. The article, reporting from the MLA, concerned the relative lack of literature scholars who specialize in Jewish-American ‘lit’ within their liter programs.
My thought on reading it was – like Anderson and Leo – that the great J-A authors are just normally included in post-war Am. Lit. courses. As anyone who is not an ignoramus knows, Roth, Malamud, Bellow, et alia, are central to that period.
A friend and colleague of mine who does work in those authors thinks that JA lit is not a widespread ‘specialization’ precisely because those great authors have been assimilated into the general study of Am Lit. Most of the newer ‘X-American lit’ positions have developed because people thought there was a group of authors whose work deserved attention, as focused on a subculture of American life, and who were not similarly included in the standard Am Lit courses. So, they bill themselves as – and are recruited as – specialists in X-Am Lit, whereas he is just a specialist in ‘post War American.’
December 30, 2009, 5:15 pmChrisTS says:
David and Monboddo:
If it helps, those of us not in the MLA, but in other humanities disciplines, also wince at this kind of stuff.
It’s even worse when they claim to know something about philosophy.
December 30, 2009, 5:19 pmAnderson says:
I’m guessing that Remains of the Day (written by Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro) is not studied in any Asian Literature department.
But he writes in English, correct?
December 30, 2009, 5:44 pmDavid Sucher says:
There is something demeaning and patronizing about “ethnic studies” when it comes to literature. It’s as if authors taught under such an umbrella only qualify because of ethnicity. Teaching the history of any group makes sense. And using that group’s literature to illustrate that history seems reasonable. But separating out fiction along ethnic lines to be studied as fiction seems insulting.
Does any specialization in lit studies along ethnic lines make sense? I took a Russian lit class in college (in English translation) and I couldn’t see then any particular reason why Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were studied in the same course besides the fact of their nationality. (Did I miss the whole point of the class?)
There are so many ways to structure knowledge — different themes, eras, subjects — that it seems purely “political” to organize it around nationality or ethnicity….political in the sense that it serves an external purpose such as satisfying a constituency or making learning more “relevant.” Not bad purposes but hardly holy.
Subject matter might provide much better opportunities for coherence. For example, shifting to another medium, it would make great sense to teach a course (in law school, in fact) about movies which use the law or the courts as their focus or venue. Or maybe books which focus on father/son or mother/daughter. Or homecoming (I am thinking of the Odyssey.)
December 30, 2009, 7:02 pmChrisTS says:
Yes. The language in which the works are written is not central, as far as I know.
I think Malvolio’s point is that it is not the ethnicity of the writer, per se, that gets her/his works included in an X-American lit grouping, but the focus of the content.
Actually, though, I do think the importance of the subcultural content might be a matter of dispute. It is often what gets an X-American Lit area going, but I think the work of authors who are of that ethnic background is sometimes included even when the work (or a particular one) is not focused on the ethnic content.
Actually, that is just the kind of dispute around which my lit crit colleagues would frame a conference session. :-)
December 30, 2009, 7:04 pmDesiderius says:
LM,
“But I fail to see the point of segregating and studying literature just because the authors happen to be Jewish. I’m proud that English students could hardly avoid being exposed to Jewish authors if they tried. I’d think that would be the goal of every ethnic literature program.”
Careful, you’re getting awfully close to questioning the value of “ethnic” literature itself. Per Bloom, great literature is great, and thus worthy of general study, exactly to the extent that it transcends the “ethnic” and gets to the human.
Malvolio,
“The purpose of “ethnic studies” is not to actually study the great works and history of the ethnic group in question. It is to create, sometimes out of whole cloth, a narrative that members of the ethnic group can feel proud of.”
Actually, as this article demonstrates to an embarrassing degree, it has devolved into almost exactly the opposite. Are Jews proud of the Holocaust? African-Americans of Jim Crow? It’s unsurprising that institutions that were once hotbeds of overt discrimination have found more covert (even to themselves?) methods of achieving the same results by peddling these victimization narratives. What is surprising is how many are taken in by them.
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December 31, 2009, 4:45 amNoah David Simon says:
and this is why Obama and his friends see the Holocaust as the reasoning behind the state of Israel and also the way to delegitimize it. We are now not only a people without a narrative beyond being the fuel for a flame of hatred. take away narrative and there is no longer history or a people. Narrative doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be truth, but there is certainly an obvious attempt to cleanse our story from the positive interactions within Western culture. If ten percent of the Roman empire was Jewish, for certain their identity goes beyond abuse?
December 31, 2009, 4:53 amAnderson says:
and this is why Obama and his friends see the Holocaust as the reasoning behind the state of Israel and also the way to delegitimize it
HELLO, out there in left field!
Yes. The language in which the works are written is not central, as far as I know.
This used not to be the case — French literature was studied in the French department, because they were the ones who could read it. I believe the perceived necessity to study literature in the language of the volk goes back to Herder.
December 31, 2009, 9:40 amSW says:
I have questions about the process.
As I understand it, if someone wants to get ahead in academia, they need to focus on some narrow expertise, and write insightful things about it. In this case (Lit.), often a particular author. They will then teach all manner of things in the field (which, historically broke down between “English” and “American” Literature*). These offerings will often be determined by the professor’s interest and student demand.
If true, it seems to me, that there is a substantial amount of self-selection by by scholars and students about what to teach and what to study.
(* This historical division probably accounts, substantially, for the national and ethnic division we currently see)
December 31, 2009, 10:57 amneurodoc says:
Perhaps proud for having endured and survived such horrors, though terribly affected by them. But it isn’t about being “proud,” it is about understanding those affects on individuals within those groups, the groups themselves, and society at large, including the perpetrators of those horrors, along with those who were complicitous or indifferent to them. Those “institutions that were once hotbeds of overt discrimination” have not “found more covert (even to themselves?) methods of achieving the same results by peddling these victimization narratives.”
Now, if you want talk about the creation of Jewish Studies programs, often with generous contributions from Jewish donors who don’t know what their money will go for, that hire “progressive” academics, many of them ex-pat Israelis, to teach anti-Israel narratives, then you will have a real basis for questioning these programs and their “covert” agendas.
January 1, 2010, 12:55 pmDesiderius says:
Neuro,
Needless to say, the two are not mutually exclusive. Cui bono?
The ancien regime in Left clothing…
January 1, 2010, 3:09 pmDesiderius says:
To be clear, I’m not advancing a conspiracy theory – there is no man behind the curtain – only noting that actions taken by elites that serve to undermine social mobility (and hence the competition), even inadvertently (hence “covert to themselves”) will tend to be self-reinforcing, whether considering what narratives are supported or policies implemented.
The ideal in both cases being those that appear (especially to their advocates) to be Progressive, while in practice achieving the opposite.
January 1, 2010, 3:38 pmneurodoc says:
Desiderius, there is a helluva difference between the “overt” forms of discrimination not all that long ago to which you allude, e.g., strict numerus clausus quotas, especially for Jews, and what you see as “covert methods of achieving the same results.” The most obvious being that Jews are at no disadvantage to Gentiles when applying to those schools, and may even aspire to be their presidents.
(Oops, I think I used “affects” above when it should have been “effects.”)
January 1, 2010, 8:35 pmDesiderius says:
neurodoc,
“The most obvious being that Jews are at no disadvantage to Gentiles when applying to those schools, and may even aspire to be their presidents.”
They’ve done more than aspire, and in the case of African-Americans, not just university presidents. The question is what they do with those presidencies.
January 2, 2010, 1:36 pm