“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.

(Oops, I think I used “affects” above when it should have been “effects.”)

The ideal in both cases being those that appear (especially to their advocates) to be Progressive, while in practice achieving the opposite.

Needless to say, the two are not mutually exclusive. Cui bono?

The ancien regime in Left clothing…

Desiderius: 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.

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.

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)

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.

“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.

Anderson: 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?

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. :-)

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.)

But he writes in English, correct?

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.

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.’

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.

Leo Marvin: I fail to see the point of segregating and studying literature just because the authors happen to be Jewish.

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.

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.

Twirip:

You think modern literature would be pretty much the same without The Naked And The Dead, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Fixer, Herzog?

I think so.

Ah, so you’re a fool. Thanks for the heads-up.

You think modern literature would be pretty much the same without The Naked And The Dead, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Fixer, Herzog?

I think so.

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.

True enough. After the English there’s a lot of competition for second place.

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.

Indeed. Although I’d note that it is Jews who have done that reducing.

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.

Blue: 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.

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:

Blue: 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.

It was my understanding there would be no math.

Incidentally, I am reminded of one of my favorite lines from Homer Simpson: “Mel Brooks is Jewish??”

The exception that proves the rule.

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.

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?

Rand. :)