Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Rutgers University Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
A Hundred Acres of America
The Geography of Jewish American Literary History
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2019
About this book
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Jewish writers have long had a sense of place in the United States, and interpretations of American geography have appeared in Jewish American literature from the colonial era forward. But troublingly, scholarship on Jewish American literary history often limits itself to an immigrant model, situating the Jewish American literary canon firmly and inescapably among the immigrant authors and early environments of the early twentieth century. In A Hundred Acres of America, Michael Hoberman combines literary history and geography to restore Jewish American writers to their roles as critical members of the American literary landscape from the 1850s to the present, and to argue that Jewish history, American literary history, and the inhabitation of American geography are, and always have been, contiguous entities.
Jewish writers have long had a sense of place in the United States, and interpretations of American geography have appeared in Jewish American literature from the colonial era forward. But troublingly, scholarship on Jewish American literary history often limits itself to an immigrant model, situating the Jewish American literary canon firmly and inescapably among the immigrant authors and early environments of the early twentieth century. In A Hundred Acres of America, Michael Hoberman combines literary history and geography to restore Jewish American writers to their roles as critical members of the American literary landscape from the 1850s to the present, and to argue that Jewish history, American literary history, and the inhabitation of American geography are, and always have been, contiguous entities.
Author / Editor information
MICHAEL HOBERMAN is a professor of English studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. He is the author of several books, including New Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America.
Reviews
— Tablet Magazine
"Hoberman engages effectively with many important voices in the study of Jewish American literature today. [A] stimulating study that significantly refigures Jewish American literature."
— American Studies in Scandinavia"A Hundred Acres is a worthy and lucid genealogy of the under-explored Jewish American geographical imagination, presented convincingly as an engagement with as well as departure from certain forms of dominant U.S. spatiality. Hoberman's nimble treatment of key texts captures the Jewish stamp on iconic American places, from 'the frontier' to the city and the 'suburban pastoral' as well as the Americanization of Jewish spaces elsewhere and, importantly, contributes to a shift in Jewish American literary scholarship away from the classic topics of immigration and assimilation toward a multidimensional criticism."
— Dalia Kandiyoti, author of Migrant Sites: America, Place, and Diaspora Literatures"Hoberman’s study...challenges us to reconsider what the canon of our literature ought to be in a series of original readings of both obscure and major figures whose vision of landscape — above all sites of memory and myth — shaped their vision of America in rich and striking ways."
— Jewish Book Council"Hoberman Reads from Book," mention in The Shelburne Falls and West County Independent
— The Shelburne Falls/West County Independent"Hoberman brilliantly revises notions of how quintessentially American landscapes shaped American Jewish writing. Elegantly written and cogently argued, this study unsettles the stories we think we know about Jewish immigration and territorial belonging in America."
— Rachel Rubinstein, author of Members of the Tribe: Native America in the Jewish Imagination"Highly recommended."
— Choice
— The Jewish Review of Books
— Tablet Magazine
"The book discusses a variety of places important to Americans, including the evolving West of the 19th century, the small towns of the Midwest and 20th-century suburbia. It ends with a landscape that has been significant to the Jewish people for thousands of years: Israel [and] suggests that the works it examines ask questions that aren’t easy to answer — but then asking hard questions is a sign of good literature."
— Greenfield Reporter"At once critically imaginative and rigorously methodological, A Hundred Acres of America is a genuinely exciting, pathbreaking work of breathtaking historical, geographical, and cultural scope."
— Ranen Omer-Sherman, JHFE Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville"Michael Hoberman has opened up freshly the pathway in Jewish American writings about the sense of place, how Jewish life in America has come to be and feel at home."
— Jules Chametzky, professor, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; founder and editor of The Massachusetts Review"Carefully chosen, sensitively read, historically contextualized, and situated within the broader currents of American literature....An apt reminder that Jews’ engagement with place has always been fraught and that the places that we take for granted are always in the midst of being imagined and invented, a process that is almost never innocent."
— Marginalia""Heterogeneous, well-researched, and well-written."
— American Jewish History"The richness of Hoberman’s work is partly a feature of its extensive chronology, which includes 150 years of literary history, and partly due to his careful comparisons that are geographically, literarily, religiously and culturally diverse and bring together an uncommon range of places, authors, texts, and histories. Hoberman offers a fresh perspective on a body of literature."
— MELUS
— American Studies Blog
"Short, smart, and pithy."
— ShofarTopics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
CONTENTS
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
PREFACE
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction. “A NEVER FAILING SOURCE OF INTEREST TO US”
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. “IN THIS VESTIBULE OF GOD’S HOLY TEMPLE”
9 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. COLONIAL REVIVAL IN THE IMMIGRANT CITY
32 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3. “A RARE GOOD FORTUNE TO ANYONE”
57 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4. “THE LONGED-FOR PASTORAL”
82 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. RETURN TO THE SHTETL
105 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. TURNING DREAMSCAPES INTO LANDSCAPES ON THE “WILD WEST BANK” FRONTIER
130 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Conclusion. MYSTICAL ENCOUNTERS AND ORDINARY PLACES
153 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
159 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
NOTES
161 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
INDEX
179 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
185
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 2, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780813589732
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780813589732
Keywords for this book
Jewish; America; literature; literary; history; immigrant; immigrant model; writers; geography; literary history; acres; Jewish American; American studies; ethnic literature; American literature; Jewish American literature; Israel; 1850s; Jewish history; current events; American geography; United States; United States history; United States of America; immigrant authors; twentieth century; twenty-first century; American literary history; Midwest; west; midwestern authors; western authors; Jewish American literary history; colony; colonies; colonial; colonial era; colonization; Hebrew; Jewish literature; religion; religious studies; God; urban; urbanization; Jewish American urban history; rural; Jewish life; Heaven; theology; theological; theological studies; urban history; rural history
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
