In this course, we'll look at the Jewish-American experience from roughly 1880 to the present day from a comparative perspective: that is, in terms of the ways in which that experience looks when placed in relation to that of African-Americans (and the fraught idiom of race), Asian-Americans (and the "model minority" myths applied to both groups) and other Euro-Americans. Our readings will be drawn from history (e.g., Matthew Frye Jacobsen's Whiteness of a Different Color), from anthropology (Sherry Ortner's New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Cul-ture, and the Class of '58), musicology (Jeffrey Melnick's The Right to Sing the Blues), and film criticism (Michael Rogin's Black Face, White Noise); but we'll spend most of our time reading novels, poems, and plays, and watching films that speak to the complexities both of the Jewish-American experience and of its place in the ethnoracial hurly-burly of twentieth-century America.

Course Requirements:

Midterm exam, final test, short quizzes and class participation.

Intended Audience:

Undergraduate students

Class Format:

Lecture