Imagined Non-Jews : : Jews Passing As Gentiles in Post-WWII and Multicultural American Fiction.

• Superior document: Costerus New Series ; v.236
• Author: Reznick, Ohad.
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : BRILL,, 2024.; ©2024.
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus New Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (253 pages)

Racial passing has fascinated thousands of American readers since the end of the nineteenth century. But what about Jews passing for gentiles? This book examines this unique phenomenon, exploring issues such as Whiteness, Americanness, gender, and race.

Table of Contents

Front Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Two "Waves" of Jewish Passing Novels -- 1 Between Acculturation and Group Solidarity: American Jews in the Long 20th Century -- 1.1 The Progressive Era (1890- 1918): Mass Migration and Jews' Distinctiveness -- 1.2 The Interwar Period: Jews as a Threat -- 1.3 The 1940s and 1950s: Other, yet Part of the Mainstream -- 1.4 Post- WWII Passing Novels -- 1.5 The 1960s- 1970s: a Jewish Ethnic Revival -- 1.6 1980- 2005: New Concerns and New Expressions of Jewishness -- 1.7 The Second Wave: Multicultural Passing Novels -- Part 1 White Lies: Passing for Non-Jewish in Postwar American Fiction -- Introduction to Part 1 -- Chapter 1 Passing: Motives, Techniques, and Outcomes -- 1 Motives: to Be Past Caring or Caring about the Past -- 2 Techniques of Passing and the Rejection of Jewish Difference -- 3 Outcomes: Many Happy Returns -- Chapter 2 Fifty Shades of White -- Chapter 3 Resolving the Tension between Two Identities -- Chapter 4 Feminine Males and Marginalized Females -- Chapter 5 Art as Mirroring Identity: the Insincerity of Passing -- 1 Wasteland: the Camera Cannot Lie -- 2 Home Is the Hunted: Depicting Uncultivated Jews -- 3 That Winter: an Open Book -- 4 "The Lady of the Lake": Con Artists -- Part 2 Between Fiction and Reality: Passing for Non-Jewish in Multicultural American Fiction -- Introduction to Part 2 -- Chapter 6 Passing: Motives, Techniques, and Outcomes -- 1 Motives: Avoiding Anti-Semitism and the Memory of the Holocaust -- 2 Passing Techniques: Performance of Non-Jewishness -- 3 Outcomes: Indefinite Identities -- Chapter 7 Almost White but Not Quite American -- Chapter 8 Fluid Gender and Jewish Identities -- Chapter 9 Passing as Fiction: Questioning the Line between True and False Identity.

1 Family Fictions: Fiction Becomes Reality -- 2 Old School: Questioning the Boundaries of Plagiarism and Identity -- 3 The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank: Destabilizing Identities through (Auto)Biographies -- Epilogue: The Human Stain and Jews' Precarious Whiteness in the Twenty-First Century -- Bibliography -- Index -- Back Cover.