New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures

Victoria Aarons is O.R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of English at Trinity University. She is the author of several books, including Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction and The Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow. Holli Levitsky is Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University and Affiliated Professor at the University of Haifa. She is the author of Summer Haven: The Catskills, the Holocaust, and the Literary Imagination.

• IntroductionHolli Levitsky Part I. Reading 1. Black Milk: A Holocaust MetaphorEric J. Sundquist 2. The American Voices of Hidden Child Survivors: Coming of Age Out of Time and PlacePhyllis Lassner 3. Reimagining History: Joe Kubert’s Graphic Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto UprisingVictoria Aarons 4. Alternate Jewish History: Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Andrew M. Gordon 5. Reading the Shema: Jewish Literature as World LiteratureNaomi B. Sokoloff 6. The "Story Without an Ending": Art, Midrash, and History in Dara Horn’s The World to Come Sandor Goodhart 7. Midrash and Social JusticeSol Neely Part II. Teaching 8. The Midrashic LegacyMonica Osborne 9. Anne Frank, Figuration, and the Ethical ImperativeAimee Pozorski 10. Nathan Englander’s "Anne Frank" and the Future of Jewish AmericaHilene Flanzbaum 11. Narrating the Past in a Different Language: Teaching the Holocaust through Third-Generation FictionJessica Lang 12. A Complicated Curriculum: Teaching Holocaust Empathy and Distance to Nontraditional StudentsJeffrey Scott Demsky and N. Ann Rider 13. Teaching Jewish American Literature in a Spanish ContextGustavo Sanchez Canales 14. Teaching William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice: Understanding the HolocaustZygmunt Mazur 15. A novel that dare not speak its name": Biographical Approaches to Saul BellowJudie Newman ContributorsIndex

"A valuable addition to the critical and pedagogical materials of scholars and teachers in Judaism and the Holocaust. It raises important questions about ethics, responses, and readings in a breadth of literary texts." — H-Net Reviews (H-Judaic)"…provides significant insights into current literary and teaching approaches to both Jewish American and Holocaust literatures … New Directions will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Holocaust and Jewish-American literatures, ethnic literatures in America, American literature, Jewish studies, and ethics." — Journal of Modern Jewish Studies"The range of critical approaches and authors examined makes this a valuable resource for scholars and teachers. Particularly in this troubling political moment, meditations on the new and continued relevance of Jewish American and Holocaust literatures for scholars, students, and the American public in general are invaluable." — Sharon B. Oster, author of No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late Nineteenth-Century American Literature