Edgar Allan Poe's strength as a writer lay in fabricating fantasies in settings far removed from his own place and time. This dislocation renders the attitudes embedded in his fiction open to interpretation, and over the years some readers have found Poe to be virulently racist, while others found him morally conflicted, and still others detected a subversion of racism in his works' subtle sympathies for non-white characters. As a nineteenth century Southerner, Poe was a deeply ambiguous figure, evading race issues while living among them, and traversing the North-South border with little sensitivity to its political implications. In this tightly organized volume, a handful of leading Americanists revisit the Poe issue, re-examining what it means to speak of an author or his work as a racist, and where the critic's responsibility lies.

To what extent are the concepts of fatherhood and family, as proposed by Sigmund Freud, still valid? Psychoanalysis, Fatherhood, and the Modern Family traces the development of Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex and discusses his ideas in the context of recent psychoanalytic work, new sociological data, and theoretical explorations on gender and diversity. Contributors include representatives from many academic disciplines, as well as practicing psychoanalysts who reflect on their experience with patients. Their exciting essays break new ground in defining who a father is-and what a father may be.

Edgar Allan Poe's strength as a writer lay in fabricating fantasies in settings far removed from his own place and time. This dislocation renders the attitudes embedded in his fiction open to interpretation, and over the years some readers have found Poe to be virulently racist, while others found him morally conflicted, and still others detected a subversion of racism in his works' subtle sympathies for non-white characters. As a nineteenth century Southerner, Poe was a deeply ambiguous figure, evading race issues while living among them, and traversing the North-South border with little sensitivity to its political implications. In this tightly organized volume, a handful of leading Americanists revisit the Poe issue, re-examining what it means to speak of an author or his work as a racist, and where the critic's responsibility lies.

To what extent are the concepts of fatherhood and family, as proposed by Sigmund Freud, still valid? Psychoanalysis, Fatherhood, and the Modern Family traces the development of Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex and discusses his ideas in the context of recent psychoanalytic work, new sociological data, and theoretical explorations on gender and diversity. Contributors include representatives from many academic disciplines, as well as practicing psychoanalysts who reflect on their experience with patients. Their exciting essays break new ground in defining who a father is-and what a father may be.

Focusing on Eastern and Central Europe before WWII, this collection explores various genres of "ethnoliterature" across temporal, geographical, and ideological borders as sites of Jewish identity formation and dissemination. Challenging the assumption of cultural uniformity among Ashkenazi Jews, the contributors consider how ethnographic literature defines Jews and Jewishness, the political context of Jewish ethnography, and the question of audience, readers, and listeners. With contributions from leading scholars and an appendix of translated historical ethnographies, this volume presents vivid case studies across linguistic and disciplinary divides, revealing a rich textual history that throws the complexity and diversity of a people into sharp relief.

Focusing on Eastern and Central Europe before WWII, this collection explores various genres of "ethnoliterature" across temporal, geographical, and ideological borders as sites of Jewish identity formation and dissemination. Challenging the assumption of cultural uniformity among Ashkenazi Jews, the contributors consider how ethnographic literature defines Jews and Jewishness, the political context of Jewish ethnography, and the question of audience, readers, and listeners. With contributions from leading scholars and an appendix of translated historical ethnographies, this volume presents vivid case studies across linguistic and disciplinary divides, revealing a rich textual history that throws the complexity and diversity of a people into sharp relief.

How do we remember persons, objects, events? Memory seems so personal, but, at the same time, it is shaped by collective experience and public representations. Newspapers, television, and even celebrations and festivities mark for us not only who we are, but also who we were and how we lived. Cultural memory and the Construction of Identity brings together scholars of folklore, literature, history, and communication to explore the dynamics of cultural memory in a variety of contexts. Memory is a powerful tool that can transform a piece of earth into a homeland and common objects into symbols. The authors of this volume show how memory is shaped and how it operates in uniting society and creating images that attain the value of truth even if they deviate from fact. They point to the relationship between this memory and our notion of "culture." They also discuss this cultural memory on the level of everyday life.