ENGLISH 3923
American Jewish Writers
Dr. James Duban

The course will commence with the New Israel identity of the American Puritans, and with the legacy of that outlook in America’s stature as the Redeemer Nation. We’ll then explore late nineteenth- through early twentieth-century emigration patterns and the autobiographies, poetry, short fiction, novels, and literary criticism of American Jewish writers. While attentive to ethnicity, classroom discussion, and papers will focus, as well, on the aesthetic achievement of these writers, relative to their chosen genres. To the degree that the ideas and nuances of American Jewish writers occasionally coincide with, or creatively build upon, the achievements of literary artists from varied cultural backgrounds, we’ll pause to note those correspondences in some detail.

Required Books:

Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus, and Five Short Stories (New York: Vintage, 1987)

Henry Roth, Call it Sleep (New York: Doubleday, 1991)

Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift (New York: Penguin, 1996)

Many photocopies of out-of-print items, especially from Abraham Chapman, ed., Jewish-American Literature (JAL); Steven J. Rubin, ed., Writing Our Lives: Autobiographies of American Jews,1890-1990 (WOL) (in course packet)

(Recommended reading: Milton Steinberg, Basic Judaism)

Requirements: A mid-term examination, a final examination, two essays, or a comprehensive term paper. Students must keep pace with the reading assignments and be prepared to contribute to classroom discussion.

ADA Accommodation: In accordance with the terms and spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504, Rehabilitation Act, I shall cooperate with the Office of Disability Accommodation to make reasonable accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. If you have not registered with ODA, I encourage you to do so. Please present your written request to me on or before the fourth class day.

Essential competencies for this course include the abilities to: (1) read, analyze, and interpret complex literary works and criticism to those works, (2) to write extended, coherent, and grammatically correct essays, and (3) to participate in class discussions about the ideas in literature. 

Week 1: 

TYPOLOGICAL JEWS IN AMERICA

Protestant historical instances of the “New Israel”:

M: Excerpts from: William Bradford, Of Plymouth’s Plantation; John Winthrop, A model of Christian Charity

W: Cotton Mather, Magnailia Christi Americana; Mary Rowlandson, Captivity Narrative

F: Cotton Mather, Introduction to Wonders of the Invisible World. Herman Melville’s response to Christian typology and the American Israel.

Week 2: 

Versions of Exodus in the early Twentieth-Century (lectures based upon Irving Howe’s The World of Our Fathers):

TOWARD AMERICA
“The World of the Shtetl,” “Fervent & Enlightenment,” “the Start of Social Change,” “The Prospect of America,” “Crossing into Europe,” “The Lure of America,” “From border to Port,” “The ordeal of Steerage,” “At Ellis Island,” “A Work of Goodness,” “’Hordes’ of Aliens,” Open Door-and Closed,” “The Jews Who Came.”

THE EAST SIDE:
“First Shock,” “A Gray, Stone World,” “A New Tempos, a New Way,” “Peddling and Sewing,” “Going to Land,” “In the tenements,” “The Implacability of Gentleness,” “A Chaos in Hebrew,” “Dislocation and Pathology,” “Voices of the Left,” “What Migration Meant.”

DISORDER AND EARLY PROGRESSES
“An Early Combat,” “New Tastes, New Styles,” “Spreading Across the City,” “An Experiment in Community,” “The Failure of the Banks,” “Beginnings of Bourgeoisie,” “What three Census shows,” “A Slow Improvement.”

SLUM AND SHOP:
“Working in the Shops,” “Rising in the World,” “Ways to Make a Living,”

THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN:
“At the Heart of the Family,” “Boarders, Desertions, Generational Conflict,” “The Inner World of the Landsmanshaft,” “Shul, Rabbi, and Cantor,” “Versions of Belief,” “From Hader to Secular School,” “Dreams of a Nation,” “A Bit of Fun on the East Side,” “ Up to the Catskills,” “Matchmakers, Weddings, and Funerals.”

THE RESTLESSNESS OF LEARNING
“Americanization of Greenhorns,” “A Visit to the Cafes,” “A Passion for lectures,” “the Self-Educated Worker,” “Fathers and Sons.”

Week 3 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

M: Elie Wiesel, “What I have learned in my Life is Questions” (JAL, 276-278), Herbert Gold, “My Last Two Thousand Years” (JAL, 279-302), Edna Ferber, “A Peculiar Treasure” (WOL, 52-63); “Groucho and Me” (JAL, 259-60).

W: Golda Meir, “My Life” (WOL, 79-66); Isaac Bashevis Singer “Lost in America”(WOL, 99-116), Meyer Levin, “In Search” (WOL, 209-217).

F: Saul Bellow, “To Jerusalem and Back,” 164-78; Arthur Miller, “Time Bends: A Life” (WOL, 2090-217).

Week 4

SHORT FICTION

M: Abraham Cahan, “A Ghetto Wedding” (JAL, 3-16), Joseph Opatoshu, “Lampshade King” (JAL, 17-20), Dorothy Parker, “The Standard of Living” (JAL, 21-26).

W: Leon Rosten, “Christopher Kaplan,” (JAL, 37-46); Joanne Greenberg, “LoOlam and White Sell Woman” (JAL, 118-28) (Compared to Melville’s Typee and Charles Darwin’s thoughts about ‘cultural’ reporting).

F: Isaac Bashevis Singer, “Fate” (JAL, 27-31); Bernard Malamud “The Lady of the Lake” (JAL, 63-83).

Week 5

Great Awakenings:

M: in 18th-Century New England

W: in Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” (photocopy).

F: in Phili Roth’s “Eli the Fanatic” (in PC).

Week 6

M: Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (JAL, 55-62); “Hugh Nissenson, “The Crazy Old Man” (JAL, 129-36).


W: Philip Roth, “Epstein” (in PC, 201-230); Philip Roth, “Defender of the Faith” (in PC, 161-200).

F: Philip Roth, “The Conversion of the Jews” (in PC, 139-58).

Week 7

POETRY

M: Emma Lazarus, “ The New Colossus” (JAL, 308); Horace Traubel, “Somewhere a Fact Stands in its Place,” “The Leaf in the Free Air Despised the Root Under Ground” (JAL, 310-312).

W: Charles Reznikiff, From “In Memoriam:1933”), “Glosses” “Kaddish” (JAL, 316-320)

F: Stanley Kunitz, “Journal for My Daughter” (325-30). (Compare to W.B. Yeat’s “ A Prayer for my Daughter”.

Week 8

POETRY

M: George Oppen, “From Disaster,” “The Source,” “Exodus” (JAL, 331-33).

W: Muriel Rukeyser, “To Be a Jew in the Twentieth Century” (JAL, 341-443); Karl Shapiro, “Jew” ( JAL, 346) “ Travelogue for Exiles” (JAL, 347-580).

F: Howard Nemerov, “Money” (JAL, 354-55) [Read in the context of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn”]. Nothe the compatibility of “Money” and “Boom!” (JAL, 357-580).

Week 9

POETRY:

M: Denise Levertov, “February Evening in Boston, 1971” (JAL, 360-362); Edward Field, “Mark Twain and Sholem Aleichem” (JAL, 382-83), Philip Levine, “For Fran,” “Death Bearing,” (JAL, 406-7, 411-12).

W: Adrienne Rich, “By No Means Native,” “Prospective Immigrants Please Note” (JAL, 414-16); Linda Pastan, “Passover” (JAL, 431-32).

F: Robert Mezey, “My Mother,” (JAL, 434,441-42; James Reiss, “ABC, Dog, a Helicopter” (JAL, 458-59); Richard Weisman, “The Day of Atonement” (JAL, 464-65).

Week 10

CRITICISM AND CONTEXTS

M: Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963), “Who are the Jews?” (JAL, 471-91); Abraham Joshua Heshel (1907-1972), “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism” (JAL, 495-512).

W: Saul Bellow, “Introduction” to Great Jewish Short Stories (JAL, 513-519); Elie Wiesel, “Israel Baal Shem Tov” (JAL, 250-25); Maurice Samuel (1895-1972), “ The World of Sholem Aleichem” (JAL, 560-68)

F: Alfred Kazin, “The Jew as Modern American Writer” (JAL, 587-96)


Week 11

CRITICISM AND CONTEXTS:

M: Norman Mailer, “The Tenth Presidential Paper—Minorities” (JAL, 626-37); Irving Malin, and Irwin Stark, “The Heart” (JAL, 665, 683-89).

W: Philip Roth, “Writing about Jews” (JAL, 694-708), Irving Howe, “Philip Roth Reconsidered” (JAL, 709-27)

THE NOVEL

F: Henry Roth, Call it Sleep

Week 12 

Call it Sleep

Week 13 

Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift

Week 14 

Philip Roth, Goodbye Colombus

Week 15 

Review