3.0

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This course explores significant features of the Jewish American literary tradition, but defines Jewish writing somewhat loosely: texts include a novel about pre-Depression immigrant experience in New York City, Yiddish “Sweatshop Poetry” in translation, WWII-era writings about Antifa resistance, Holocaust fiction, postmodern mystical poetry, and a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” Along the way, we’ll discuss how Jewish writing is also always about class, race, gender, and sexuality. Writers may include Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Paul Goodman, Delmore Schwartz, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Cynthia Ozick, and Philip Roth; dramatists may include Clifford Odets, Lillian Hellman, and Tony Kushner; poets may include Muriel Rukeyser, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, and Adrienne Rich.