Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America

Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America PDF Author: Alan Mintz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029580369X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Holocaust took place far from the United States and involved few Americans, yet rather than receding, this event has assumed a greater significance in the American consciousness with the passage of time. As a window into the process whereby the Holocaust has been appropriated in American culture, Hollywood movies are particularly luminous. Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America examines reactions to three films: Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Pawnbroker (1965), and Schindler�s List (1992), and considers what those reactions reveal about the place of the Holocaust in the American mind, and how those films have shaped the popular perception of the Holocaust. It also considers the difference in the reception of the two earlier films when they first appeared in the 1960s and retrospective evaluations of them from closer to our own times. Alan Mintz also addresses the question of how Americans will shape the memory of the Holocaust in the future, concluding with observations on the possibilities and limitations of what is emerging as the major resource for the shaping of Holocaust memory�videotaped survivor testimony. Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America examines some of the influences behind the broad and deep changes in American consciousness and the social forces that permitted the Holocaust to move from the margins to the center of American discourse.

Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America

Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America PDF Author: Alan Mintz
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029580369X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Holocaust took place far from the United States and involved few Americans, yet rather than receding, this event has assumed a greater significance in the American consciousness with the passage of time. As a window into the process whereby the Holocaust has been appropriated in American culture, Hollywood movies are particularly luminous. Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America examines reactions to three films: Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Pawnbroker (1965), and Schindler�s List (1992), and considers what those reactions reveal about the place of the Holocaust in the American mind, and how those films have shaped the popular perception of the Holocaust. It also considers the difference in the reception of the two earlier films when they first appeared in the 1960s and retrospective evaluations of them from closer to our own times. Alan Mintz also addresses the question of how Americans will shape the memory of the Holocaust in the future, concluding with observations on the possibilities and limitations of what is emerging as the major resource for the shaping of Holocaust memory�videotaped survivor testimony. Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America examines some of the influences behind the broad and deep changes in American consciousness and the social forces that permitted the Holocaust to move from the margins to the center of American discourse.

Shaping Losses

Shaping Losses PDF Author: Julia Epstein
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069499
Category : Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Shaping Losses explores how traumatic loss affects identity and how those who are shaped by loss give shape, in turn, to the empty place where something--relationships, family, culture--was and is no longer. Taking the example of the decimation of European Jewry during the Nazi era, Shaping Losses confronts the problem of transforming trauma into cultural memory. This eloquent volume examines how memoirs, films, photographs, art, and literature, as well as family conversations and personal remembrances, embody the impulse to preserve what is destroyed. The contributors -- all distinguished women scholars, most of them survivors or daughters of survivors--examine classic memorializations such as Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah and Roman Vishniac's photographs of prewar Jews as well as several less-well-known works. They also address ways in which children of survivors of the Holocaust--and of other catastrophic traumas--struggle with inherited or vicarious memory, striving to come to terms with losses that centrally define them although they experience them only indirectly. Shaping Losses considers the limitations of Holocaust representations and testimonies that capture shards of the experience but are necessarily selective and reductive. Contributors discuss artistic efforts to "preserve the rawness" of memory, to resist redemptive closure in Holocaust narratives and public memorials, and to prevent the Holocaust from being sealed in "the cold storage of history." The authors probe the nature of memory and of trauma, studying the use of language within and outside a traumatic context such as Auschwitz and pinpointing the qualities that make traumatic memory ineffable, untransmittable, and perhaps unreliable. Within the "haunted terrain of traumatized memory" that all Holocaust testimonies inhabit, the impulse to give form to emptiness--to shape loss--emerges as a necessary betrayal, a vital effort to bridge the gap between history and memory.

Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture

Encyclopedia of Jewish American Popular Culture PDF Author: Jack Fischel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313087342
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 513

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Book Description
This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Without the profound contributions of American Jews, the popular culture we know today would not exist. Where would music be without the music of Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand, humor without Judd Apatow and Jerry Seinfeld, film without Steven Spielberg, literature without Phillip Roth, Broadway without Rodgers and Hammerstein? These are just a few of the artists who broke new ground and changed the face of American popular culture forever. This unique encyclopedia chronicles American Jewish popular culture, past and present in music, art, food, religion, literature, and more. Over 150 entries, written by scholars in the field, highlight topics ranging from animation and comics to Hollywood and pop psychology. Up-to-date coverage and extensive attention to political and social contexts make this encyclopedia is an excellent resource for high school and college students interested in the full range of Jewish popular culture in the United States. Academic and public libraries will also treasure this work as an incomparable guide to our nation's heritage. Illustrations complement the text throughout, and many entries cite works for further reading. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic sources to encourage further research.

Jews and American Popular Culture

Jews and American Popular Culture PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Impact of the Holocaust in America

The Impact of the Holocaust in America PDF Author: Bruce Zuckerman
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1557535345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The Jewish Role in American Life examines the complex relationship between Jews and the United States. Jews have been instrumental in shaping American culture and Jewish culture and religion have likewise been profoundly recast in the United States, especially in the period following World War II.

Holocaust vs. Popular Culture

Holocaust vs. Popular Culture PDF Author: Mahitosh Mandal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000925161
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Holocaust vs. Popular Culture debates and deconstructs the binary responses to the representation of the Holocaust in European and non-European forms of Popular Culture. The binary is defined in terms of “incompatibility” between the Holocaust and Popular Culture on the one hand and the “universalization” of the Holocaust memory through Popular Culture on the other. The book does emphasize the anti-representation argument. Nevertheless, the authors make a case for a productive understanding of “Holocaust Popular Culture” as contributing to the expansion of Holocaust studies as well as cultural studies in the transnational context. The book theorizes Popular Culture in broad terms and highlights the diversity of Holocaust Popular Culture mainly but not exclusively produced in the twenty-first century. This interdisciplinary collection covers a wide variety of Popular Culture genres including language, literature, films, television shows, soap operas, music, dance, social media, advertisements, comics, graphic novels, videogames, and museums. It studies the (mis)representation of the Holocaust trauma, not only across genres but also across nations (Western and Asian) and generations (from testimonial remembrance to post-memory). This book will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines and subjects, including Popular Culture, Holocaust studies, cultural studies, genocide studies, postcolonial and transnational studies, media and film studies, visual culture, games studies, race and ethnicity studies, memory studies, and Jewish studies.

Jewish Identity in Western Pop Culture

Jewish Identity in Western Pop Culture PDF Author: J. Stratton
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230612741
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This book looks at the post-Holocaust experience with emphasis on aspects of its impact on popular culture.

Mapping Generations of Traumatic Memory in American Narratives

Mapping Generations of Traumatic Memory in American Narratives PDF Author: Dana Mihăilescu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443861626
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
This volume collects work by several European, North American, and Australian academics who are interested in examining the performance and transmission of post-traumatic memory in the contemporary United States. The contributors depart from the interpretation of trauma as a unique exceptional event that shatters all systems of representation, as seen in the writing of early trauma theorists like Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, and Dominick LaCapra. Rather, the chapters in this collection are in conversation with more recent readings of trauma such as Michael Rothberg’s “multidirectional memory” (2009), the role of mediation and remediation in the dynamics of cultural memory (Astrid Erll, 2012; Aleida Assman, 2011), and Stef Craps’ focus on “postcolonial witnessing” and its cross-cultural dimension (2013). The corpus of post-traumatic narratives under discussion includes fiction, diaries, memoirs, films, visual narratives, and oral testimonies. A complicated dialogue between various and sometimes conflicting narratives is thus generated and examined along four main lines in this volume: trauma in the context of “multidirectional memory”; the representation of trauma in autobiographical texts; the dynamic of public forms of national commemoration; and the problematic instantiation of 9/11 as a traumatic landmark.

Toward the Visualization of History

Toward the Visualization of History PDF Author: Mark Moss
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739144340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Over the past 50 years, the influence of visuals has impacted society with greater frequency. No subject is immune from the power of visual culture, and this fact becomes especially pronounced with regards to history and historical discourse. Where once the study of the past was books and printed articles, the environment has changed and students now enter the lecture hall with a sense of history that has been gleaned from television, film, photography, and other new media. They come to understand history based on what they have seen and heard, not what they have read. What are the implications of this process, this visualization of history? Mark Moss discusses the impact of visuals on the study of history with an examination of visual culture and the future of print. Recognizing the visual bias of the younger generations and using this as a starting point for teaching history is a critical component for reaching students. By providing an analysis of photography, film, television, and computer culture, Moss uses the Holocaust as an historical case study to illustrate the ways in which visual culture can be used to bring about an awareness of history, as well as the potential for visual culture becoming a driving force for social and cultural change.

The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism

The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism PDF Author: Dana Evan Kaplan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827006
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
This volume provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the most important and interesting historical and contemporary facets of Judaism in America. Written by twenty-four leading scholars from the fields of religious studies, American history and literature, philosophy, art history, sociology, and musicology, the book adopts an inclusive perspective on Jewish religious experience. Three initial chapters cover the development of Judaism in America from 1654, when Sephardic Jews first landed in New Amsterdam, until today. Subsequent chapters include cutting-edge scholarship and original ideas while remaining accessible at an introductory level. A secondary goal of this volume is to help its readers better understand the more abstract term of 'religion' in a Jewish context. The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism will be of interest not only to scholars but also to all readers interested in social and intellectual trends in the modern world.