Nearly all scholars who work on medieval or early modern texts at some point work from digital facsimiles. There are advantages and disadvantages to such objects: what they might offer in terms of convenience and availability, they lack in material information. We can adjust the nature of what questions we ask of which object, consulting digital…[Read more]

This paper examines Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces (2007) in the context of Holocaust literature and historiography. It begins with an introduction to the genre of Holocaust literature and the problematic nature of ‘survivor’ testimony. Michaels’ work is then contextualized within this body of literature. The essay goes on to examine the means t…[Read more]

Argues that the documentary Paper Clips exemplifies the ways in which Holocaust education can unwittingly foster competing victimization narratives between blacks and Jews, sanitize both European and U.S. history, and serve subtle
but pernicious forms of supersessionism.

Argues that the documentary Paper Clips exemplifies the ways in which Holocaust education can unwittingly foster competing victimization narratives between blacks and Jews, sanitize both European and U.S. history, and serve subtle
but pernicious forms of supersessionism.

Film review of Woman in Gold (2015) as a cinematic rendering of the material turn in Holocaust memory.

Film review of Woman in Gold (2015) as a cinematic rendering of the material turn in Holocaust memory.

This article explores what Gershom Scholem has called Herbert Marcuse’s “unacknowledged ties to [his] Jewish heritage.” At the core of Marcuse’s vision of transformed, non-repressive social relations, I argue, is a struggle over time, which rests upon a distinctly Jewish approach to the twin questions of remembrance and redemption. One example…[Read more]

This dissertation examines post-Holocaust, Jewish American novelists that utilize messianism in their narratives to negotiate ambivalence about Zionism. Studying novels from the mid-1980’s to 2013, I look at the triangular relationship between Jewish American identification, the Holocaust, and Israel, to explore major topics in contemporary J…[Read more]

This article is a review of the Haan-Lewalski OUP edition of Milton’s shorter. The book, I argue, is inexcusably difficult to use, and suggests that perhaps the time has come to replace long, very expensive tomes with digital editions.

This article is a review of the Haan-Lewalski OUP edition of Milton’s shorter. The book, I argue, is inexcusably difficult to use, and suggests that perhaps the time has come to replace long, very expensive tomes with digital editions.

This essay was one of the first to challenge the over-stress on close reading as the key to literary appreciation, by advocating a greater stress on literature’s broader context and its achievement in social, political, and religious terms.

This comparative study in the evolution of subjectivity in European literature during the Renaissance ascribes it to the impact of the Reformation on the public representation of authorial identity, differing from Stephen Greenblatt’s later application of Foucault to six Tudor authors.

This comparative study in the evolution of subjectivity in European literature during the Renaissance ascribes it to the impact of the Reformation on the public representation of authorial identity, differing from Stephen Greenblatt’s later application of Foucault to six Tudor authors.

“The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely held belief in critical race theory that “race” is a category without purchase before the modern era. Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries—chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon l…[Read more]

Commedia dell’Arte was the most influential and widespread theatre movement in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Europe. A considerable part of its popularity can be accounted for by its comic representation of stressful occurrences within everyday life in early modern Europe, including in its representation of the period’s widespread dis…[Read more]

Although Flannery O’Connor’s fiction has been subjected to criticism of all types and although she is known for her interest in religious matters, no one prior to this has done an in-depth study on the presentation of conversion in her fiction. With William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience as a basis for both definition and struc…[Read more]

In twelfth‐century Germany, where mysticism was a common phenomenon, Hildegard of Bingen and her visions were readily accepted — making it all the more significant that, despite the generally receptive conditions, Hildegard went to such trouble to make sure her visions and her writings were endorsed by the Church. In contrast, Joan of Arc, liv…[Read more]