Queer Theory and the Jewish Question / Edition 1

by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, Ann Pellegrini

Overview

The essays in this volume boldly map the historically resonant intersections between Jewishness and queerness, between homophobia and anti-Semitism, and between queer theory and theorizations of Jewishness. With important essays by such well-known figures in queer and gender studies as Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Marjorie Garber, Michael Moon, and Eve Sedgwick, this book is not so much interested in revealing—outing—"queer Jews" as it is in exploring the complex social arrangements and processes through which modern Jewish and homosexual identities emerged as traces of each other during the last two hundred years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231113755
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/10/2003
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Daniel Boyarin is Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the departments of Near Eastern studies and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also an affiliated faculty member in the women's studies department and gay and lesbian studies program. He is the author of Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man. Daniel Itzkovitz is associate professor of English at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. He has published articles on Jewish studies, queer theory, and American literature and is the editor of a new edition of Fannie Hurst's Imitation of Life. Ann Pellegrini is associate professor of religious studies and performance studies at New York University. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race.

Table of Contents

Strange Bedfellows: An Introduction, by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini
From Vested Interests, by Marjorie Garber
From Epistemology of the Closet, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Queers Are Like Jews, Aren't They? Analogy and Alliance Politics, by Janet R. Jakobsen
Freud, Blüher, and the Secessio Inversa: Männerbünde, Homosexuality, and Freud's Theory of Cultural Formation, by Jay Geller
Jew Boys, Queer Boys: Rhetorics of Antisemitism and Homophobia in the Trial of Nathan "Babe'' Leopold Jr. and Richard "Dickie'' Loeb, by Paul B. Franklin
Viva la Diva Citizenship: Post-Zionism and Gay Rights, by Alisa Solomon
Homophobia and the Postcoloniality of the "Jewish Science', by Daniel Boyarin
Messianism, Machismo, and "Marranism'': The Case of Abraham Miguel Cardoso, by Bruce Rosenstock
The Ghost of Queer Loves Past: Ansky's "Dybbuk'' and the Sexual Transformation of Ashkenaz, by Naomi Seidman
Barbra's "Funny Girl'' Body, by Stacy Wolf
Tragedy and Trash: Yiddish Theater and Queer Theater, Henry James, Charles Ludlam, Ethyl Eichelberger, by Michael Moon
You Go, Figure; or, The Rape of a Trope in the "Prioress's Tale', by Jacob Press
Dickens's Queer "Jew'' and Anglo-Christian Identity Politics: The Contradictions of Victorian Family Values, by David A. H. Hirsch
Coming Out of the Jewish Closet with Marcel Proust, by Jonathan Freedman
Queer Margins: Cocteau, La Belle et la béte, and the Jewish Difference, by Daniel Fischlin
Reflections on Germany, by Judith Butler

What People are Saying About This

author of The Pleasure Principle: Sex - Michael Bronski

It would be an easy, and incorrect, presumption to see this amazing, diverse collection of essays as simply proclaiming: out of the closet and into the Kabala. But the enigmatic, interrelated recognitions between the subjects of this book 's queerness and Jewishness are far more complex, and far more astonishing, than such an easy assumption would allow. While Queer Theory and the Jewish Question deals with Jews, queers and everyone in-between, its central subject is the endless permeable nature of identity and outsiderness. These essays touch upon a startling range of cultural figures — from Leopold and Loeb to Fagin, from Freud to Fanon, from Fanny Brice to Yentl (both by way of Barbara Streisand) — neatly explicating the underlying, often unspoken, social and political underpinnings of the 20th century.

Andrew Parker

Jews and queers? What's not to like! This volume has everything one could wish for to facilitate forms of cultural analysis as provocative as they are timely. Bringing together now-classic and specially commissioned essays exploring a range of historical topics -- from Chaucer to Leopold and Loeb, and from Proust to Barbra Streisand -- Queer Theory and the Jewish Question assesses powerfully the possibilities and limits of thinking together the terms of its title, terms its authors show to be both irreducible and bound intimately to each other.

— Andrew Parker, Amherst College

Editorial Reviews

Other than Boyarin'sUnheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man, this appears to be the first book to explore the inventions of the homosexual and the modern Jew. Seventeen insightful essays show how those inventions are mutually implicated.... Highly recommended.

Choice

It is one of those rare academic works that is difficult, if not impossible, to put down.

Nova Religio - Melissa M. Wilcox

Addresses in thoughtful and engaging ways the intersection of Jewishness and the queer in a range of cultural texts.

— David Moscowitz

An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies

It is one of those rare academic works that is difficult, if not impossible, to put down.

— Melissa M. Wilcox, Whitman College

Nova Religio

cultural analysis that offers scholars of both queer theory and Jewish studies fresh avenues for thought and research

— Michael G. Cornelius

The Bloomsbury Review

This skilled collection does more than track the career of the queer-Jewish analogy from Spanish crypto-Jews to Israel drag queens.... It's a vital, long-awaited book.

— Marissa Pareles

Lambda Book Report

cultural analysis that offers scholars of both queer theory and Jewish studies fresh avenues for thought and research

The Bloomsbury Review - Michael G. Cornelius

This skilled collection does more than track the career of the queer-Jewish analogy from Spanish crypto-Jews to Israel drag queens.... It's a vital, long-awaited book.

Lambda Book Report - Marissa Pareles

The publication of Queer Theory and the Jewish Question is reason to get excited... [it] juggles theoretical concerns with popular culture and never condescends. But more than that, the book makes reading serious essays about homosexuality fun again. And that's saying a lot.

The Guide

This scholarly and well-documented volume is a strong addition to any academic or research collection focusing on the Jewish identity, homosexual identity, and particularly the relation between the two.

American Jewish Libraries Newsletter

Addresses in thoughtful and engaging ways the intersection of Jewishness and the queer in a range of cultural texts.

An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies - David Moscowitz