Description:
As a field, German-Jewish Studies emphasizes the dangers of nationalism, monoculturalism, and ethnocentrism, while making room for multilingual and transnational perspectives with questions surrounding migration, refugees, exile, and precarity. Focussing on the relevance and utility of the field for the twenty-first century, German-Jewish Studies explores why studying and applying German-Jewish history and culture must evolve and be given further attention today. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to reconsider the history of antisemitism--as well as intersections of antisemitism with racism and colonialism--and how connections to German Jews shed light on the continuities, ruptures, anxieties, and possible futures of German-speaking Jews and their legacies.
Brief description:
Kerry Wallach is Associate Professor of German Studies and an affiliate of the Jewish Studies Program at Gettysburg College. She is the author of Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2017) and numerous articles on German-Jewish literature, history, film, visual and consumer culture, and gender and sexuality. She serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Leo Baeck Institute New York Berlin and the editorial board of the book series German Jewish Cultures (Indiana University Press, supported by the Leo Baeck Institute London).
Review Quotes:
"German-Jewish Studies makes a valuable contribution to the field. The chapters are of a high standard across the board and the volume will help students and academics get a good sense of how things in the field of German-Jewish studies stand: how healthy it is, where its strengths lie, and where gaps have merged that new research and perspectives could fill" - Christian Bailey, Purchase College
"It is an original and impressive interdisciplinary collection of essays that are a window to the future in German-Jewish Studies" - Frank R. Nicosia, University of Vermont