Books published by Wayne State University Press

This third edition of this anthology of modern Yiddish poetry has been enhanced with the addition of 20 new poems, a new preface, and a revised introduction on the history of the development of Yiddish poetry. The poems are presented both in the original Yiddish and in English translation.

Voices of the Holocaust and the act of memory.

In the thirteenth century, an anonymous scribe compiled sixty-nine tales that became Sefer ha-ma'asim, the earliest compilation of Hebrew tales known to us in Western Europe. The author writes that the stories encompass "e;descriptions of herbs that cure leprosy, a fairy princess with golden tresses using magic charms to heal her lover's wounds and restore him to life; a fire-breathing dragon . . . a two-headed creature and a giant's daughter for whom the rind of a watermelon containing twelve spies is no more than a speck of dust."e; In Tales in Context: Sefer ha-ma'asim in Medieval Northern France, Rella Kushelevsky enlightens the stories' meanings and reflects the circumstances and environment for Jewish lives in medieval France. Although a selection of tales was previously published, this is the first publication of a Hebrew-English annotated edition in its entirety, revealing fresh insight. The first part of Kushelevsky's work, "e;Cultural, Literary and Comparative Perspectives,"e; presents the thesis that Sefer ha-ma'asim is a product of its time and place, and should therefore be studied within its literary and cultural surroundings, Jewish and vernacular, in northern France. An investigation of the scribe's techniques in reworking his Jewish and non-Jewish sources into a medieval discourse supports this claim. The second part of the manuscript consists of the tales themselves, in Hebrew and English translation, including brief comparative comments or citations. The third part, "e;An Analytical and Comparative Overview,"e; offers an analysis of each tale as an individual unit, contextualized within its medieval framework and against the background of its parallels. Elisheva Baumgarten's epilogue adds social and historical background to Sefer ha-ma'asim and discusses new ways in which it and other story compilations may be used by historians for an inquiry into the everyday life of medieval Jews. The tales in Sefer ha-ma'asim will be of special value to scholars of folklore and medieval European history and literature, as well as those looking to enrich their studies and shelves.

Provides a comprehensive introduction for the English reader to the poetry of Friedrich Hoelderlin.

Although it lasted only four seasons and just forty-four episodes, The Killing attracted considerable critical notice and sparked an equally lively debate about its distinctive style and innovative approach to the television staple of the police procedural. A product of the turn toward revisionist "e;quality"e; television in the post-broadcast era, The Killing also stands as a pioneering example of the changing gender dynamics of early twenty-first-century television. Author John Alberti looks at how the show's focus shifts the police procedural away from the idea that solving the mystery of whodunit means resolving the crime, and toward dealing with the ongoing psychological aftermath of crime and violence on social and family relationships. This attention to what creator and producer Veena Sud describes as the "e;real cost"e; of murder defines The Killing as a milestone feminist revision of the crime thriller and helps explain why it has provoked such strong critical reactions and fan loyalty. Alberti examines the history of women detectives in the television police procedural, paying particular attention to how the cultural formation of the traditionally male noir detective has shaped that history. Through a careful comparison with the Danish original, Forbrydelsen, and a season-by-season overview of the series, Alberti argues that The Killing rewrites the masculine lone wolf detective-a self-styled social outsider who sees the entanglements of relationships as threats to his personal autonomy-of the classic noir. Instead, lead detective Sarah Linden, while wary of the complications of personal and social attachments, still recognizes their psychological and ethical inescapability and necessity. In the final chapter, the author looks at how the show's move to ever-expanding niche markets and multi-viewing options, along with an increase in feminist reconstructions of various television genres, makes The Killing a perfect example of cult television that lends itself to binge-watching in the digital era. Television studies scholars and fans of police procedurals should own this insightful volume.

In this anthology, filmmakers, psychoanalysts, film scholars and cultural historians use a psychoanalytic approach to examine Bernardo Bertolucci's film ""The Last Emperor"" (1988). The book is divided into four parts entitled ""Filmcraft"", ""Psychoanalysis"", ""Film Scholarship"" and ""Cultural History"".

Los Angeles is a global metropolis whose history and social narrative is linked to one of its top exports: cinema. L.A. appears on screen more than almost any city since Hollywood and is home to the American film industry. Historically, conversations of social and racial homogeneity have dominated the construction of Los Angeles as a cosmopolitan city, with Hollywood films largely contributing to this image. At the same time, the city is also known for its steady immigration, social inequalities, and exclusionary urban practices, not dissimilar to any other borderland in the world. The Spanish names and sounds within the city are paradoxical in relation to the striking invisibility of its Hispanic residents at many economic, social, and political levels, given their vast numbers. Additionally, the impact of the 1992 Los Angeles riots left the city raw, yet brought about changing discourses and provided Hollywood with the opportunity to rebrand its hometown by projecting to the world a new image in which social uniformity is challenged by diversity. It is for this reason that author Celestino Deleyto decided to take a closer look at how the quintessential cinematic city contributes to the ongoing creation of its own representation on the screen. From Tinseltown to Bordertown: Los Angeles on Film starts from the theoretical premise that place matters. Deleyto sees film as predominantly a spatial system and argues that the space of film and the space of reality are closely intertwined in complex ways and that we should acknowledge the potential of cinema to intervene in the historical process of the construction of urban space, as well as its ability to record place. The author asks to what extent this is also the city that is being constructed by contemporary movies. From Tinseltown to Bordertown offers a unique combination of urban, cultural, and border theory, as well as the author's direct observation and experience of the city's social and human geography with close readings of a selection of films such as Falling Down, White Men Can't Jump, and Collateral. Through these textual analyses, Deleyto tries to situate filmic narratives of Los Angeles within the city itself and find a sense of the "e;real place"e; in their fictional fabrications. While in a certain sense, Los Angeles movies continue to exist within the rather exclusive boundaries of Tinseltown, the special borderliness of the city is becoming more and more evident in cinematic stories. Deleyto's monograph is a fascinating case study on one of the United States' most enigmatic cities. Film scholars with an interest in history and place will appreciate this book.

The Thousand and One Days, a companion collection to The Thousand and One Nights, was published in 1710-1712 by French Orientalist scholar Francois Petis de la Croix who advertised it as the faithful, albeit selective translation of a Persian work. Subsequent research has found that The Thousand and One Days is actually the adapted translation of a fifteenth-century anonymous Ottoman Turkish compilation titled Relief after Hardship. This compilation, in turn, is the enlarged translation of an equally anonymous Persian collection of tales that likely dates back to as early as the thirteenth century. The tales in both the Ottoman Turkish and the Persian collections are mostly tales of the marvelous and the strange, a genre that dominated much of the narrative literatures of the pre-modern Muslim world. Ulrich Marzolph's Relief after Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for The Thousand and One Days is a detailed assessment of the Ottoman Turkish compilation and its Persian precursor. Based upon Andreas Tietze's unpublished German translation of the Ottoman Turkish Ferec ba'd es-sidde, it traces the origins of the collection's various tales in the pre-modern Persian and Arabic literatures and its impact on Middle Eastern and world tradition and folklore. Ottoman Turkish literature proves to be a suitable candidate for the transmission of tales from East to West long before the European translation of The Thousand and One Nights. Additionally, the concept of "e;relief after hardship"e; has the same basic structure as the European fairy tale, wherein the protagonist undergoes a series of trials and tribulations before he attains a betterment of his status. Marzolph contends that the early reception of these tales from Muslim narrative tradition might well have had an inspiring impact on the nascent genre of the European fairy tale that has come to know international success today. This fascinating compilation of tales is being presented for the first time to an English language audience along with a comprehensive survey of its history, as well as detailed summaries and extensive comparative annotations to the tales that will be of interest to literature and folklore scholars.

This work revisits, through restored photographs, including some of Ford's own, the first 40 years of Henry Ford's life. It dispels some of the myths attached to the automobile legend and includes photographs of the early stages of the first automobile.

The debut of the film The Boys in the Bandwas revolutionary for its fictional but frank presentation of a male homosexual subculture in Manhattan. The scholars assembled here bring an invigorating variety of methods to their considerations of this singular film. Coming from a wide range of academic disciplines, they pose and answer questions about the film in remarkably different ways.

In 1839, Muslims attacked the Jews of Meshhed, murdering 36 of them, and forcing the conversion of the rest. While some managed to escape across the Afghan border, and some turned into true believing Muslims, the majority adopted Islam only outwardly, while secretly adhering to their Jewish faith. Jadid al-Islam is the fascinating story of how this community managed to survive, at the risk of their lives, as crypto-Jews in an inimical Shi'i Muslim environment. Based on unpublished original Persian sources and interviews with members of the existing Meshhed community in Jerusalem and New York, this study documents the history, traditions, tales, customs, and institutions of the Jadid al-Islam-"e;New Muslims."e;

Focuses on the vital role played by the Great Lakes shipping industry during World War II. George J. Joachim examines how the industry met the unprecedented demand for the shipment of raw materials to meet production quotas during the war, when failure to do so would have had disastrous consequences for the nation's defense effort.

Using organizational bulletins, surveys, interviews, and personal observations and anecdotes, Lowenstein paints a picture of a unique lifestyle now in the process of merging into American Jewry and disappearing.

An annotated translation of the Yudisher Theriak, along with a comprehensive introduction that places the original work in its historical context.

Establishes the terms for engaging the meanings of citizenship in the world today by framing the issue as a pull between founding beliefs and multicultural trajectories.

This compilation of sixteen plays written during the Harlem Renaissance brings together for the first time the works of Langston Hughes, George S. Schuyler, Francis Hall Johnson, Shirley Graham, and others. In the introduction, James V. Hatch sets the plays in a historical context as he describes the challenges presented to artists by the political and social climate of the time. The topics of the plays cover the realm of thehuman experience in styles as wide-ranging as poetry, farce, comedy, tragedy, social realism, and romance. Individual introductions to each play provide essential biographical background on the playwrights.In the continuing rediscovery of writers and works from the Harlem Renaissance, Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance 1920-1940 serves as essential background for contemporary readers and is a valuable contribution to African American literary and theatrical scholarship.

This first English-language edition is a completely revised and expanded version of Die Umlaufgetriebe, published by the Springer-Verlag in 1971. It will be extremely useful to American engineers since it stresses the efficiencies of new and existing transmission designs and provides concise guide rules as well as worksheets. A thorough understanding of the sometimes difficult material is facilitated through the use of both schematic and symbolic diagrams. The book is profusely illustrated and analyzes many applications. These drives receive an unusually clear treatment because at Dr. Müller's discovery of their perfect analogy to the simple epicyclic drive trains.Unified methods of analysis and synthesis of complex drives are employed throughout, suggesting that further simplifications may be possible through the use of a multivalued logic system which is analogous to the bivalent logic system of digital electronics. This book presents a clear and concise description of a multitude of revolving gear trains in terms common to all, whereas previous publications have been limited to treatment on interesting subproblems. Its well-reasoned definitions and classifications will aid engineers in the selection and design of the best drives for any given application.

Reveals the complexities inherent in the processes of emancipation and modernization, focusing on the efforts of French Jewish leaders to come to terms with the social and religious implications of modernity. Jay Berkovitz's emphasis on the intellectual history of French Jewry provides a new perspective on a significant chapter of Jewish history.

Looks at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation. John Alberti and P. Andrew Miller have gathered scholars to explore and examine the cultural, political, aesthetic, and pedagogical dimensions of this pop culture phenomenon and how it has changed the reception of both the films and books.

New perspectives on Anglo-Jewish history via the poetry and song of Yiddish-speaking immigrants in London from 1884 to 1914.

Traces the religious parties of the modern state of Israel from their origins in Europe early in the twentieth century to, in response and reaction to the rise of Zionism, their transplantation to Palestine, their adaptation to the new realities, their participation in the quazi-government of the Jewish community under the British mandate, and their unfolding roles after independence.

By turns shocking, nightmarish, despairing, bitterly ironic, and, in rare instances, full of laughter, the fifty-five oral histories in The Invisible Soldier add a significant chapter to black history. The interviews disclose the brutality of the unseen wars black servicemen fought when confronted with the official army policy of segregation and by attitudes in southern communities, as well as overseas.

The story of music told in this book begins in pre-Islamic times with musical forms that bear strong imprints of the Bedouin's tribal way of life. Pre-Islamic music can be viewed as the forerunner of the art music that acquired a foothold after the advent of Islam. The history of Arab music then became inextricably entwined with the musical traditions of the conquered lands. The merging of diverse forms into a unique common style marked the advent of the Great Musical Tradition that gained favor throughout an extensive geographical area. By the end of Islam's third century, distinct autonomous styles began to appear involving Persians and Turks in particular.