Department of English

Distribution III: Arts and Letters
Cross listed with GRMN 263 and ENGL 287 and JWST 263
All readings and lectures in English

This course introduces novels, short fiction, and poetry written in America by Jews. Issues of Jewish identity and ethnicity in an American context inform our discussions. We will consider how literary form and language develop as Jewish writers "immigrated" from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Using the new (ital) Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (ital) and other texts, we will read authors who wrote between 1800 and 2000. These writers include: Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman. Course requirements: 20-25 pp. of writing (Two 5-7 page papers and a final 10-12 page paper).