Jewish Cultural Studies charts the contours and boundaries of Jewish cultural studies and the issues of Jewish culture that make it so intriguing-and necessary-not only for Jews but also for students of identity, ethnicity, and diversity generally. In addition to framing the distinguishing features of Jewish culture and the ways it has been studied, and often misrepresented and maligned, Simon J. Bronner presents several case studies using ethnography, folkloristic interpretation, and rhetorical analysis. Bronner, building on many years of global cultural exploration, locates patterns, processes, frames, and themes of events and actions identified as Jewish to discern what makes them appear Jewish and why. Jewish Cultural Studies is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the conceptualization of how Jews in complex, heterogenous societies identify themselves as a cultural group to non-Jews and vice versa-such as how the Jewish home is socially and materially constructed. Part 2 delves into ritualization as a strategic Jewish practice for perpetuating peoplehood and the values that it suggests-for example, the rising popularity of naming ceremonies for newborn girls, simhat bat or zeved habat, in the twenty-first century. Part 3 explores narration, including the global transformation of Jewish joking in online settings and the role of Jews in American political culture. Bronner reflects that a reason to separate Jewish cultural studies from the fields of Jewish studies and cultural studies is the distinctiveness of Jewish culture among other ethnic experiences. As a diasporic group with religious ties and varying local customs, Jews present difficulties of categorization. He encourages a multiperspectival approach that considers the Jewish double consciousness as being aware of both insider and outsider perspectives, participation in ancient tradition and recent modernization, and the great variety and stigmatization of Jewish experience and cultural expression. Students and scholars in Jewish studies, cultural studies, ethnic-religious studies, folklore, sociology, psychology, and ethnology are the intended audience for this book.

Americanness: Inquiries into the Thought and Culture of the United States analyzes several core themes that connect Americans because of, and despite, their pronounced diversity. The book investigates shared ideas and ideals, such as individualism, mobility, materialism, and future-orientation, that drive an overarching American worldview. Simon J. Bronner begins with ideas of space and time as they formed and changed through the history of the United States, before moving to the emergence of modern American culture. He examines reasons America is characterized as having a "victory culture" that extends to the American legal, military, and business complexes. This victory culture is further analyzed by looking at the country's relationship with the game of football-a sport that thrives in America but has not caught on in other countries. Finally, the volume probes American consumerism driven by a desire for individual prosperity in a supposedly egalitarian society. Using interdisciplinary approaches drawn from psychology, sociology, ethnology, and history, Bronner seeks explanations for people invoking, and evoking, ideas that they perceive as American. This book would be an invaluable addition to courses on American history, sociology, cultural studies, and American studies.

Americanness: Inquiries into the Thought and Culture of the United States analyzes several core themes that connect Americans because of, and despite, their pronounced diversity. The book investigates shared ideas and ideals, such as individualism, mobility, materialism, and future-orientation, that drive an overarching American worldview. Simon J. Bronner begins with ideas of space and time as they formed and changed through the history of the United States, before moving to the emergence of modern American culture. He examines reasons America is characterized as having a "victory culture" that extends to the American legal, military, and business complexes. This victory culture is further analyzed by looking at the country's relationship with the game of football-a sport that thrives in America but has not caught on in other countries. Finally, the volume probes American consumerism driven by a desire for individual prosperity in a supposedly egalitarian society. Using interdisciplinary approaches drawn from psychology, sociology, ethnology, and history, Bronner seeks explanations for people invoking, and evoking, ideas that they perceive as American. This book would be an invaluable addition to courses on American history, sociology, cultural studies, and American studies.

Folklore: The Basics is an engaging guide to the practice and interpretation of folklore. Taking examples from around the world, it explores the role of folklore in expressing fundamental human needs, desires, and anxieties that often are often not revealed through other means. Providing a clear framework for approaching the study of folklore, it introduces the reader to methodologies for identifying, documenting, interpreting and applying key information about folklore and its relevance to modern life. From the Brothers Grimm to Internet Memes, it addresses such topics as: What is folklore? How do we study it? Why does folklore matter? How does folklore relate to elite culture? Is folklore changing in a digital age? With case studies, suggestions for reading and a glossary of key terminology, Folklore: The Basics supports readers in becoming familiar with folkloric traditions and interpret cultural expression. It is an essential read for anyone approaching the study of folklore for the first time.

Modernity offers people choices about who they want to be and how they want to appear to others. The way in which Jews choose to frame their identity establishes the dynamic of their social relations with other Jews and non-Jews - a dynamic complicated by how non-Jews position the boundaries around what and who they define as Jewish. This book uncovers these processes, historically, as well as in contemporary behavior, and finds explanations for the various manifestations, in feeling and action, of 'being Jewish.' Boundaries and borders raise fundamental questions about the difference between Jews and non-Jews. At root, the question is how 'Jewish' is understood in social situations where people recognize or construct boundaries between their own identity and those of others. The question is important because this is by definition the point at which the lines of demarcation between Jews and non-Jews, and between different groupings of Jews, are negotiated. Collectively, the contributors to the book expand our understanding of the social dynamics of framing Jewish identity. The book opens with an introduction that locates the issues raised by the contributors in terms of the scholarly traditions from which they have evolved. Part I presents four essays dealing with the construction and maintenance of boundaries - two by scholars showing how boundaries come to be etched on an ethnic landscape and two by activists who question and adjust distinctions among neighbors. Part II focuses on expressive means of conveying identity and memory, while, in Part III, the discussion turns to museum exhibitions and festive performances as locations for the negotiation of identity in the public sphere. A lively discussion forum concludes the book with a consideration of the paradoxes of Jewish heritage revival in Poland, and the perception of that revival by Jews and non-Jews. *** ..".these essays help us understand the social dynamics of Jewish identity and how identity is constructed in modern life." -- AJL Reviews, February/March 2015 (Series: Jewish Cultural Studies - Vol. 4) [Subject: Jewish Studies, Cultural Studies]

Folklore: The Basics is an engaging guide to the practice and interpretation of folklore. Taking examples from around the world, it explores the role of folklore in expressing fundamental human needs, desires, and anxieties that often are often not revealed through other means. Providing a clear framework for approaching the study of folklore, it introduces the reader to methodologies for identifying, documenting, interpreting and applying key information about folklore and its relevance to modern life. From the Brothers Grimm to Internet Memes, it addresses such topics as: What is folklore? How do we study it? Why does folklore matter? How does folklore relate to elite culture? Is folklore changing in a digital age? With case studies, suggestions for reading and a glossary of key terminology, Folklore: The Basics supports readers in becoming familiar with folkloric traditions and interpret cultural expression. It is an essential read for anyone approaching the study of folklore for the first time.

The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies surveys the materials, approaches, concepts, and applications of the field to provide a sweeping guide to American folklore and folklife, culture, history, and society. Forty-three comprehensive and diverse chapters delve into significant themes and methods of folklore and folklife study; established expressions and activities; spheres and locations of folkloric action; and shared cultures and common identities. Beyond the longstanding arenas of academic focus developed throughout the 350-year legacy of folklore and folklife study, contributors at the forefront of the field also explore exciting new areas of attention that have emerged in the twenty-first century such as the Internet, bodylore, folklore of organizations and networks, sexual orientation, neurodiverse identities, and disability groups. Encompassing a wide range of cultural traditions in the United States, from bits of slang in private conversations to massive public demonstrations, ancient beliefs to contemporary viral memes, and a simple handshake greeting to group festivals, these chapters consider the meanings in oral, social, and material genres of dance, ritual, drama, play, speech, song, and story while drawing attention to tradition-centered communities such as the Amish and Hasidim, occupational groups and their workaday worlds, and children and other age groups. Weaving together such varied and manifest traditions, this handbook pays significant attention to the cultural diversity and changing national boundaries that have always been distinctive in the American experience, reflecting on the relative youth of the nation; global connections of customs brought by immigrants; mobility of residents and their relation to an indigenous, urbanized, and racialized population; and a varied landscape and settlement pattern. Edited by leading folklore scholar Simon J. Bronner, this handbook celebrates the extraordinary richness of the American social and cultural fabric, offering a valuable resource not only for scholars and students of American studies, but also for the global study of tradition, folk arts, and cultural practice.

Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive "praxic" perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that "this is the way we do things around here." Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. "The way we do things" invokes the social basis of "doing" in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting "wild child" beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered "folk societies" such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Often overlooked as routine or even dismissed as odd customs, ritual in its many guises demands attention as a central strategy for embodying experience. Like other groups, Jews rely on ritual to provide an inventory of social meanings and a context for negotiating the challenges of everyday life. Ritual for Jews has historically carried special meanings for conveying what is Jewish about Jewishness. It is not enough, however, simply to document customs: for a full understanding of ritual and its meaning for participants we need to analyze how ritual expressions, such as liturgies, holidays, life-cycle events - even political rallies - change in response to developments in the wider society, or are adapted to meet new needs. The innovative studies of adapted, invented, and evolving rituals are presented in this volume, including the Tunisian Jewish celebration of Se'udat Yitro, liturgical prayers for Israel Independence Day, shiva observance in an old-age home, transplanted Ethiopian Jewish wedding events, and same-sex marriage rituals. These interpret the Jewish enactment of ritual and uses of tradition in everyday life against the background of modernity and community. It is the complexities of ritual - the dynamics of negotiating the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern, the social and the political, performance and practice - that form the core of the book. Together, the contributions show ritual action to be key to the maintenance of Jewish identity and to the expression of a distinctive world-view. 'A worthy read for anyone interested in Jewish ritual.' David Tesler, AJL Reviews

For a Jew, describing a place as 'home' conveys connotations of heritage as well as of residence. Additionally, feeling 'at home' suggests a sense of comfort in one's social surroundings. The questions at the heart of this volume are: what things make a home 'Jewish, ' materially and emotionally, and what is it that makes Jews feel 'at home' in their environment? The material dimensions are explored through a study of the symbolic and ritual objects that convey Jewishness and a consideration of other items that may be used to express Jewish identity in the home - something that the introduction identifies as 'living room Judaism.' The discussion is geographically and ethnically wide-ranging, and the transformation of meaning attached to different objects in different environments is contextualized, as, for example, in Shalom Sabar's study of hamsa amulets in Morocco and Israel. For diasporic Jewish culture, the question of feeling at home is an emotional issue that frequently emerges in literature, folklore, and the visual and performing arts. The phrase 'at homeness in exile' aptly expresses the tension between the different heritages with which Jews identify, including that between the biblical promised land and the cultural locations from which Jewish migration emanated. The essays in this volume take a closer look at the way in which ideas about feeling at home as a Jew are expressed in literature originating in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, and also at the political ramifications of these emotions. The question is further explored in a series of exchanges on the future of Jews feeling 'at home' in Australia, Germany, Israel, and the United States. Jews at Home is the first book to examine the theme of the Jewish home materially and emotionally from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including literature, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, art history, and folk and popular culture. The essays in the collection use the theme of home and the concept of domestication to revise understanding of the lived (and built) past, and to open new analytical possibilities for the future. Its discussion of domestic culture and its relevance to Jewish identity is one with which readers should feel right at home. Selected as a finalist for the 2010 National Jewish Book Awards in the catagory of Anthologies and Collections. 'Highly readable and captivating. The conceptual thread linking the fifteen articles is their emphasis on how the Jewish family has shaped Jewish life . . . the articles are intriguing and far-ranging in topic and geographic area.' Jewish Book World, Summer 5771/2011

The Jewish Cultural Studies series offers a contemporary view of Jewish culture around the globe. Multidisciplinary, multi-focused, and eclectic, it covers the cultural practices of secular Jews as well as of religious Jews of all persuasions, and from historical as well as contemporary perspectives. It also considers the range of institutions that represent and respond to Jewishness, including museums, the media, synagogues, and schools. More than a series on Jewish ideas, it uncovers ideas of being Jewish. This volume proposes that the idea of 'Jewish', or what people think of as 'Jewishness', is revealed in expressions of culture and applied in constructions of identity and representation. In Part I, 'Expression', Elly Teman considers how the kabbalistic red string found at sites throughout Israel conveys a political and psychological response to terrorism. Sergey Kravtsov examines Jewish and non-Jewish narratives concerning a synagogue in eastern Europe. Miriam Isaacs looks at expressions of cultural continuity in DP camps in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and Jascha Nemtsov discusses how Jewish folk music was presented as high art in early twentieth-century Germany. In Part II, 'Identity', Joachim Schlor enquires how the objects taken by emigrants leaving Germany for Palestine after Hitler's rise to power represented their identities. Hanna Kliger, Bea Hollander-Goldfein, and Emilie Passow examine how survivors' narratives become integrated into family identities. Olga Gershenson offers close readings of how the identities of Jews as enacted in post-perestroika films highlight conflicting Russian attitudes towards Jews. Ted Merwin considers commercial establishments as 'sacred spaces' for Jewish secular identities. Part III, 'Representation', opens with stories collected in Israel by Ilana Rosen from Jews who lived in Carpatho-Russia, while Judith Lewin considers the characterization of the Jewish woman in French literature. Holly Pearse and Mikel Koven, respectively, decode the Jewishness of modern radio comedy and Hollywood film. The idea of Jewishness is applied in the volume with provocative interpretations of Jewish experience, and fresh approaches to the understanding of Jewish cultural expressions. CONTRIBUTORS Simon J. Bronner, Olga Gershenson, Bea Hollander-Goldfein, Miriam Isaacs, Hannah Kliger, Mikel J. Koven, Sergey R. Kravtsov, Judith Lewin, Ted Merwin, Jascha Nemtsov, Emilie S. Passow, Holly A. Pearse, Ilana Rosen, Joachim Schlor, Elly Teman

The American essays of renowned writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) artistically chronicle the robust urban life of Cincinnati and New Orleans. Hearn is one of the few chroniclers of urban American life in the nineteenth century, and much of this material has not been widely available since the 1950s. Lafcadio Hearn's America collects Hearn's stories of vagabonds, river people, mystics, criminals, and some of the earliest accounts available of black and ethnic urban folklife in America. He was a frequently consulted expert on America during his years in Japan, and these editorials reflect on the problems and possibilities of American life as the country entered its greatest century. Hearn's work, which reflects an America that is less "melting pot" than a varied, spicy, and often exotic gumbo, provide essential background for the study of America's first steps away from its agrarian beginnings.

Jewish Cultural Studies charts the contours and boundaries of Jewish cultural studies and the issues of Jewish culture that make it so intriguing-and necessary-not only for Jews but also for students of identity, ethnicity, and diversity generally. In addition to framing the distinguishing features of Jewish culture and the ways it has been studied, and often misrepresented and maligned, Simon J. Bronner presents several case studies using ethnography, folkloristic interpretation, and rhetorical analysis. Bronner, building on many years of global cultural exploration, locates patterns, processes, frames, and themes of events and actions identified as Jewish to discern what makes them appear Jewish and why. Jewish Cultural Studies is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the conceptualization of how Jews in complex, heterogenous societies identify themselves as a cultural group to non-Jews and vice versa-such as how the Jewish home is socially and materially constructed. Part 2 delves into ritualization as a strategic Jewish practice for perpetuating peoplehood and the values that it suggests-for example, the rising popularity of naming ceremonies for newborn girls, simhat bat or zeved habat, in the twenty-first century. Part 3 explores narration, including the global transformation of Jewish joking in online settings and the role of Jews in American political culture. Bronner reflects that a reason to separate Jewish cultural studies from the fields of Jewish studies and cultural studies is the distinctiveness of Jewish culture among other ethnic experiences. As a diasporic group with religious ties and varying local customs, Jews present difficulties of categorization. He encourages a multiperspectival approach that considers the Jewish double consciousness as being aware of both insider and outsider perspectives, participation in ancient tradition and recent modernization, and the great variety and stigmatization of Jewish experience and cultural expression. Students and scholars in Jewish studies, cultural studies, ethnic-religious studies, folklore, sociology, psychology, and ethnology are the intended audience for this book.

In an effort to disentangle motherhood from idealized notions of the Jewish family, Motherhood in the Jewish Cultural Imagination presents new perspectives on Jewish mothers by examining them in an array of time periods and social, religious, literary and historical contexts. This collection of articles also grants mothers a more prominent analytical place in the narration of Jewishness by exploring the ways that Jews have used motherhood to construct and sustain Jewish culture. Each contribution exposes the complexities of the place that mothers occupy in our understanding of Jewish culture and identity. Utilizing methodologies from literature, folklore, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and religion, the essays in this volume locate mothers, motherhood, and mothering in a societal context organized by gender and show how these images interact with, support, and contest prevailing gender belief systems. The book include examinations of childless women warriors of the Bible; childrearing and custodial care in ancient Israel; analyses of the power of God in relationship to the power of mothers in rabbinic literature; depictions of pregnant mothers; descriptions of rabbinic mothers in mourning; images of motherhood in the Zohar; constructions of mothers in medieval piyut; analyses of medieval stories about mothers; perspectives on biblical mothers in modern Jewish literature; mothers in the Hebrew revival movement; mothers in Jewish women's prayer books; mothers in Jewish children's literature; Ottoman Jewish mothers; Afghani Jewish mothers; mothers in Israeli film; and the impact of mothering on American Jewish women activists.

How Jews use media to connect with one another has profound consequences for Jewish identity, community, and culture. This volume explores how the use of media can both create communities and divide them because of how different media shape actions and project anxieties, conflicts, and emotions. Taken together, the essays presented here consider how Jewish use of media at home and in the street, as well as in the synagogue and in school, affects the individual's sense of ethnic and religious affiliation. They include closely observed case studies, in various national contexts, of the role of popular film, television, records, the Internet, and smartphones, as well as the role of print media, now and historically. They raise fascinating questions about how Jews and Jewish institutions harness, tolerate, or resist media to create their sense of social belonging as Jews within the wider society.

Part oral history and part rule book, The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games is a joyous collection of memories of playing indoor and outdoor games; of making dolls, homemade board games, playhouses, and other toys--each with complete instructions and the flavor of southern Appalachia. Every toy and game has been tested by the Foxfire students and is devised to make or play yourself, without major expense, complicated parts, or electricity. Originally published in 1985, the book includes familiar games like marbles, hopscotch, and horseshoes, as well as more obscure entertainments such as stealing the pines, crows and cranes, and thimble. Here, too, are instructions for constructing playhouses, noisemakers, puzzles, and whimmy diddles. The book also provides information on special games traditionally played on Sundays and holidays. For those who are tired of worn-out batteries and electronic toys and for anyone curious about the playtimes of an earlier generation, The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games is a welcome and entertaining guide. |From the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Travis traces the history of men and emotions in American discourse. She argues that injury became a comfortable vocabulary--particularly among white middle-class men--through which to articulate and to claim a range of emotional wounds. Debates about injury that flourished in the cultural arenas of medicine, psychology, and the law spilled over into the realm of fiction, Travis demonstrates, in works by Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.

Folklore. Washington Irving and Mark Twain used it in their fiction; Sigmund Freud and William James incorporated it into their work; Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt promoted it. Their efforts were set against the background of folklorists who brought collections of traditional tales, songs, and crafts to the attention of a modernizing society. The ideas of these folklorists influenced how Americans thought about the character of their society and the directions it was taking.

Here for the first time is a history of American folkloristic ideas and the figures who shaped them. Simon Bronner puts these ideas in cultural context, showing the interconnection of folklore studies with historical events, social changes, and intellectual movements. He follows the beginnings of American folklore studies in the antiquarian literature of the 1830s through the rise of folklore societies in the 1880s to the emergence of an independent discipline in the 1950s. In this progression, Bronner identifies several major themes tying folklore studies to intellectual history: first, the unearthing of a hidden, usable past; second, the charting of time and space; and third, the structuring of communication. More than a chronological or biographical history, this book is an interpretation of folkloristic ideas and their relationship to American society.

What are the components of youth cultures today? This encyclopedia examines the facets of youth cultures and brings them to the forefront. Although issues of youth culture are frequently cited in classrooms and public forums, most encyclopedias of childhood and youth are devoted to history, human development, and society. A limitation on the reference bookshelf is the restriction of youth to pre-adolescence, although issues of youth continue into young adulthood. This encyclopedia addresses an academic audience of professors and students in childhood studies, American studies, and culture studies. The authors span disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, and folklore. The Encyclopedia of Youth Cultures in America addresses a need for historical, social, and cultural information on a wide array of youth groups. Such a reference work serves as a corrective to the narrow public view that young people are part of an amalgamated youth group or occupy malicious gangs and satanic cults. Widespread reports of bullying, school violence, dominance of athletics over academics, and changing demographics in the United States has drawn renewed attention to the changing cultural landscape of youth in and out of school to explain social and psychological problems. Offers information on groups beyond the gangs the public associates with youth culture, providing definitions of suburban youth culture, survivalists and preppers, the deaf, skateboarders, Gen X, soldiers, and street kids, among others Provides coverage of the expressive genres of American youth and the way they have shaped public tastes and trends, such as music, dance, fashion, tattooing, body piercing, social media, and more Features an exploration of life issues for youth that have entered into the headlines-for example, bullying, cliques, rites of passage, student protest and activism, child abuse, and drugs

Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.

Take this test. You think today s sensitive, caring man is: (a) a myth, (b) an oxymoron, or (c) a moron. No matter whether you laugh at this bit of folk humor, its wide circulation bespeaks a modern predicament for American men.

Men s "manly" traditions have been shaken in an age of "sensitivity." Some observers have even referred to a crisis of masculinity for a new generation of boys. In Manly Traditions, established scholars in the fields of folklore, men s studies, and gender studies identify the folkloric roots of what it means to be a man in America. In a lively volume they examine the traditions men inherit and adapt for their own purposes in contemporary life."

" America stocks its shelves with mass-produced goods but fills its imagination with handmade folk objects. In Pennsylvania, the ""back to the city"" housing movement causes a conflict of cultures. In Indiana, an old tradition of butchering turtles for church picnics evokes both pride and loathing among residents. In New York, folk-art exhibits raise choruses of adoration and protest. These are a few of the examples Simon Bronner uses to illustrate the ways Americans physically and mentally grasp things. Bronner moves beyond the usual discussions of form and variety in America's folk material culture to explain historical influences on, and the social consequences of, channeling folk culture into a mass society.