[On
June 1, 1916, Louis Brandeis was confirmed to the Supreme Court, becoming
the first
Jewish American Justice. So this week I’ve highlighted the American stories
of Brandeis and four other exemplary Jewish Americans, leading up to this
special weekend tribute to one of our best Jewish Studies scholars!]
In honor of both
this week’s series and the New
England American Studies Association conference (happening Saturday right
here at Fitchburg State), a tribute to three wonderful works through which my colleague
and friend (and longtime NEASA contributor) Michael has expanded the
disciplines of Jewish Studies:
1)
How
Strange It Seems: The Cultural Life of Jews in Small Town New England
(2008): Michael’s second book combines oral history and folklore studies (among
other disciplinary lenses) to consider the voices, lives, stories, and contexts
for Jewish New Englanders across the 20th century and into the 21st.
I remember chatting with Michael about this project when I interviewed at FSU
back in the spring of 2005, but to be honest I had no idea just how many
different layers he would find to his focal subjects and their stories and
histories. This book remains a model of oral history for me, among its many
other significant meanings.
2)
New
Israel/New England: Jews and Puritans in Early America (2011): I had
the great good fortune of getting that FSU job, and thus of being Michael’s
colleague as he pivoted to his third book project and a much more overtly
historical frame. But Michael weds his broad historical topics and themes (such
as the development of Puritan religious ideology, in direct conversation with
other religious and communal perspectives such as the era’s Jewish Americans)
with intimate engagement with individual voices and lives (often through rich
close readings of letters, journals, and other primary sources), making this compelling
book both a personal and a regional and national history (as well as a
pioneering Jewish Studies analysis of these early American figures and
stories).
3)
A
Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History
(2018): I’m sure it will come as no surprise that Michael once again pivoted to
a new disciplinary lens for this most recent book, which analyzes a series of
seminal Jewish American literary works and authors through the geographical and
symbolic frames of land and home. Those frames, among many other aspects of the
book, do connect it very fully to his prior works, however, creating a series
of through-lines across which Michael has been building his own many acres of
Jewish Studies real estate throughout this multi-decade career. I won’t pretend
to be an expert, but for this AmericanStudier at least you can’t tell the story
of 21st century Jewish Studies without a prominent spot for the
works and perspective of Michael Hoberman.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Jewish Americans (or scholarly works) you’d highlight?
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