Description: Muscling in on New Worlds brings together a dynamic new collection of studies that approach sport as a window into Jewish identity formation in the Americas.
Review Quotes: "The editors' willingness to go outside the traditional parameters of who and what we would expect to be included in a discussion of sports enhances the volume and is evidenced early on in the introduction by the statement that "Perhaps the greatest Jewish athlete in the Americas was Harry Houdini" (8). Abrams's essay significantly expands the book's theoretical scope by bringing in post-colonial theory and the history of imperialism to the exploration of the development of Jewish identity and thereby greatly advances the intention announced by the book's subtitle to relate Jews and sport to the making of the Americas, rather than simply focusing on Jews and sport in the Americas." -Harry Brod, American Jewish History, Vol. 100, No. 1 (2016).
"Given its originality, cross-culture perspective, challenging analysis, and proposals for new directions in future research, Muscling in on New Worlds comes highly recommended to sport scholars. The anthology does not pursue closure; rather it employs original paradigms, topics, and sources to advance the discussion of Jews and sport." -William M. Simons, State University of New York at Oneonta, Journal of Sport History, Volume 43.1 (Spring 2016).
"[B]y placing chapters on Jews and popular music in the USA alongside chapters on their South American analogues, the context of these studies becomes subtly altered. This isn't just because the Argentinian and Brazilian artists discussed are often much less well known globally than American ones, but also because a 'hemispheric' focus enables - potentially at least - a destabilisation of the sometimes inward-looking perspective that dominates discussions of Jews, popular music and the USA....Or, to put it another way, by considering North and South American Jewish popular music together, we might be able to re-position Jewish music in the Diaspora communities of the Americas into a more fluid notion of Diaspora." -Keith Kahn-Harris, Birkbeck College and Leo Baeck College, Popular Music, Vol. 36, Issue 1, pp. 131-133.