ENG 370 Jewish World Literature

A history of modern Jewish literature that explores our enduring attachment to the book as an object Barbara E. Mann tells a history of modern Jewish literature, from novels and poetry to graphic novels and artists' books. Bringing contemporary work on secularism and design in conversation with literary history, she offers a new and distinctive frame for understanding how literary genres emerge

Is there such a thing as a distinctive Jewish literature? While definitions have been offered, none has been universally accepted. Modern Jewish literature lacks the basic markers of national literatures: it has neither a common geography nor a shared language--though works in Hebrew or Yiddish are almost certainly included--and the field is so diverse that it cannot be contained within the bounds of one literary category. Each of the fifteen essays collected in Modern Jewish Literatures takes on the above question by describing a movement across boundaries--between languages, cultures, genres, or spaces.