Intimate Radicals

In the early 1900s, a handful of unconventional romantic relationships emerged within the American radical Left. Progressive settlement houses, socialist gatherings, and literary bohemias provided an ideal setting for individuals from diverse backgrounds to meet and, in some instances, fall in love. Intimate Radicals tells the story of a group of young, East European Jewish women and white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men—all of whom became notable figures in American literature, domestic and international affairs, or early Hollywood—and how they imbued their romantic lives with revolutionary principles. As Progressive Era radicals rebelled against the constraints of an earlier era, East European Jews—and Jewish women in particular—came to embody a new cosmopolitan ideal and European revolutionary spirit. Drawing on correspondence, newspapers, literature, and film, Walters reveals the political and cultural contingencies of desire, and how the public reception of these relationships lent credence to a new cultural mythology of Jewish womanhood.