Books published by Wayne State University Press

An exploration of the temporal function that "the Jew" plays in literature. No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late Nineteenth-Century American Literature examines how the Hebraic myth, in which Jewishness became a metaphor for an ancient, pre-Christian past, was reimagined in nineteenth-century American realism.

Anthologizes contemporary stories, comics, and visual texts that intervene in a range of ways to challenge the popular perception of fairy tales as narratives offering heteronormative happy endings that support status-quo values.

With a fresh perspective, Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life challenges the current historical paradigm in the study of Orthodox Judaism and other tradition-bound faith communities in the United States.Paying attention to "lived religion," the book moves beyond sermons and synagogues and examines the webs of experiences mediated by any number of American cultural forces. With exceptional writing, Zev Eleff lucidly explores Orthodox Judaism's engagement with Jewish law, youth culture and gender, and how this religious group has been affected by its indigenous environs. To do this, the book makes ample use of archives and other previously unpublished primary sources.Eleff explores the curious history of Passover peanut oil and the folkways and foodways that battled in this culinary arena to both justify and rebuff the validity of this healthier substitute for other fatty ingredients. He looks at the Yeshiva University quiz team's fifteen minutes of fame on the nationally televised College Bowl program and the unprecedented pride of young people and youth culture in the burgeoning Modern Orthodox movement. Another chapter focuses on the advent of women's prayer groups as an alternative to other synagogue experiences in Orthodox life and the vociferous opposition it received on the grounds that it was motivated by "heretical" religious and social movements. Whereas past monographs and articles argue that these communities have moved right toward a conservative brand of faith, Eleff posits that Orthodox Judaism-like other like-minded religious enclaves-ought to be studied in their American religious contexts.The microhistories examined in Authentically Orthodox are some of the most exciting and understudied moments in American Jewish life and will hold the interest of scholars and students of American Jewish history and religion.

Against the methodological backdrop of historical and comparative folk narrative research, 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition surveys the history, dissemination, and characteristics of over one hundred narratives transmitted to Western tradition from or by the Middle Eastern Muslim literatures.

In Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Volume III, 1942-1951, readers experience his horror at the persecution of the European Jews, as well as his joy in the founding of the State of Israel. Above all else, Kaplan was concerned with the survival and welfare of the Jewish people.

In a thrilling interconnected narrative, You're in the Wrong Place presents characters reaching for transcendence from a place they cannot escape. In turns elegiac and harrowing, You're in the Wrong Place blends lyric intensity with philosophical eroticism to create a singular, powerful vision of contemporary American life.

An ecopoet whose writing shows her advocacy for natural resources, in this collection Alison Swan calls the reader to witness, appreciate, and sustain this world before it becomes too late. These poems were written out of an impulse to track down wisdom in the open air, outside of the noisy world of cars and commerce.

Traces the history of the cameo as it emerged in twentieth-century cinema. Although the cameo has existed in film culture for over a century, Joceline Andersen explains that this role cannot be strictly defined because it exists as a constellation of interactions between duration and recognition, dependent on who is watching and when.