Books published by Wayne State University Press

The life story of a Jewish healer who worked in the Western High Atlas Mountain region of Morocco. Based on interviews with Moroccan Jews, this biography recreates the important moments in Wazana's life and evaluates his character from psychological and anthropological perspectives.

Offers a rich depiction of contemporary life in one marginalized development town in the Israeli Negev. Placing the stories of five women at the centre, author Pnina Motzafi-Haller depicts a range of creative strategies used by each woman to make a meaningful life within a reality of multiple exclusions.

The first genocide of the twentieth century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904-1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated thousands of Herero and Nama people. In The Genocidal Gaze, Elizabeth R. Baer uses the trope of the gaze to trace linkages between the genocide of the Herero and Nama and that of the victims of the Holocaust.

A literary memoir of exile and survival in Soviet prison camps during the Holocaust. Most Polish Jews who survived the Second World War did not go to concentration camps, but were banished by Stalin to the remote prison settlements and Gulags of the Soviet Union. Ellen G. Friedman's The Seven, A Family Holocaust Story is an account of this displacement.

Explores the relative prosperity of midsize Canadian urban areas (population 50,000 to 400,000) over the past two decades. While there appears to be no single economic development strategy that will lead to greater prosperity for every community, Sands and Reese explore the various factors that help explain why some work and others don't.

A literary account of the author's experience in World War I. Hell on Earth is the second book written by Avigdor Hameiri (born Feuerstein, 1890-1970) about his experiences as a Russian prisoner of war during the second half of World War I. Available for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this reality-driven novel is comparable to All Quiet on the Western Front.

Provides critical analysis of both mainstream and independent audiovisual works, many of them little known, produced in Mexico since the turn of the twenty-first century. Paul Julian Smith aims to tease out the symbiotic relationship between culture and queerness in Mexico.

Traces Detroit's history from its earliest settlement into the 1960s.

A collection of essays that are at the forefront of developing an entirely new field of transnational study, which seeks to integrate scholarship from the areas of the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the history of Poland and the Soviet Union, and the study of refugees and displaced persons.

Examines relationships between black and white Detroit residents through the lens of 1967, fifty years later.

Illustrates how Hollywood films negotiate shifting historical contexts of internationalisation through complex narratives about transnational exchange-a topic that has thus far been neglected in scholarship on classical Hollywood.

A fresh and engaging international tribute to Bernard Malamud, a major American Jewish novelist in the postwar era of the twentieth century.

French filmmaker Christophe Honore challenges audiences with complex cinematic form, intricate narrative structures, and aesthetically dynamic filmmaking. But the limited release of his films outside of Europe has left him largely unknown to U.S. audiences. In Christophe Honore: A Critical Introduction, authors David A. Gerstner and Julien Nahmias invite English-speaking scholars and cineastes to explore Honore's three most recognized films, Dans Paris (2006), Les Chansons d'amour (2007), and La Belle personne (2008)-"e;the trilogy."e; Gerstner and Nahmias analyze Honore's filmmaking as the work of a queer auteur whose cinematic engagement with questions of family, death, and sexual desire represent new ground for queer theory. Considering each of the trilogy films in turn, the authors take a close look at Honors cinematic technique and how it engages with France's contemporary cultural landscape. With careful attention to the complexity of Honors work, they consider critically contested issues such as the filmmaker's cinematic strategies for addressing AIDS, the depth of his LGBTQ politics, his representations of death and sexual desire, and the connections between his films and the New Wave. Anchored by a comprehensive interview with the director, the authors incorporate classical and contemporary film theories to offer a range of cinematic interventions for thinking queerly about the noted film author. Christophe Honor A Critical Introduction reconceptualizes the relationship between film theory and queer theory by moving beyond predominant literary and linguistic models, focusing instead on cinematic technique. Students and teachers of queer film will appreciate this thought-provoking volume.

Hava Shapiro is among the nearly forgotten Jewish women writers who sought acceptance in Jewish literary circles of the last century. Born in Slavuta (modern-day Ukraine) in 1878, she published works of fiction, memoir, literary criticism, and journalism, including a volume of short fiction and a scholarly monograph on the Czech leader Masaryk. Her handwritten diary-the first known diary to be kept by a woman in Hebrew-evokes not only the momentous events of her day but also the experiences of women like herself who failed to follow the dictates of Jewish tradition and aspired to roles beyond those of wife and mother. In "To Tread New Ground": Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, editors and translators Carole B. Balin and Wendy I. Zierler present an English anthology of Shapiro's late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Hebrew writings. The selection culls from her short fiction, feminist literary criticism, reportage and literary essays, as well as her diary and hundreds of letters. Shapiro chronicled, publicly and privately, such cataclysmic events as the Russian Revolution and both World Wars in addition to critical episodes in the Jewish past, including pogroms, mass migration, ruptures in traditional Jewish life, and the development of Zionism. A list of Shapiro's intimates, whom she describes in both her diary and published reminiscences, reads like a "who's who" of the Russian Haskalah, including Y. L. Peretz, Reuven Brainin, David Frischmann, Nahum Sokolov, Micha Yosef Berdischevsky, and Hayim Nahman Bialik. To further contextualize Shapiro's writings, Balin and Zierler include a thorough introduction and translations of critical essays about Shapiro. Balin and Zierler's Hebrew edition of Shapiro's writing, Behikansi atah, which was published in Israel in 2008, brought the first broad attention and readership to Shapiro's remarkable biography and writings. The translations in "To Tread New Ground," which include previously uncollected materials, will be welcomed by English-speaking readers interested in Hebrew literature, East European Jewish history, and gender studies.

John Bartlow Martin, a freelance writer who had spent long weeks in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, was struck with the idea of a book on Michigan's Upper Peninsula when he was there on his wedding trip. Returning each summer to the area, Martin discovered the region's diverse history, full of colorful and interesting personalities and events. The territory has been wilderness, a haunt of the Chippewas and the Hurons, copper country, iron country, lumber country, and lastly, a vacation land.Filled with stories of adventure and daring, Call It North Country recounts the lives of miners, hunters, trappers, and lumberjacks- the hardy breeds who first populated the harsh land of the Upper Peninsula.

An intimate history of the Holocaust that casts new light on our understanding of victimhood and survival.

In Red Alert: Marxist Approaches to Science Fiction Cinema, editors Ewa Mazierska and Alfredo Suppia argue that Marxist philosophy, science fiction, and film share important connections concerning imaginings of the future. Contributors look at themes across a wide variety of films, including many international co-productions to explore individualism versus collectivism, technological obstacles to travel through time and space, the accumulation of capital and colonization, struggles of oppressed groups, the dangers of false ideologies, and the extension of the concept of labor due to technological advances.Red Alert considers a wide swath of contemporary international films, from the rarely studied to mainstream science fiction blockbusters like The Matrix. Contributors explore early Czechoslovak science fiction, the Polish-Estonian co-productions of director Marek Piestrak, and science fiction elements in 1970s American blaxploitation films. The collection includes analyses of recent films like Transfer (Damir Lukacevic), Avalon (Mamoru Oshii), Gamer (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor), and District 9 and Elysium (Neill Blomkamp), along with more obscure films like Alex Rivera's materialist science fiction works and the Latin American zombie films of Pablo Parés, Hernán Sáez, and Alejandro Brugués. Contributors show that the ambivalence and inner contradictions highlighted by the films illustrate both the richness of Marx's legacy and the heterogeneity and complexity of the science fiction genre.This collection challenges the perception that science fiction cinema is a Western or specifically American genre, showing that a broader, transnational approach is necessary to fully understand its scope. Scholars and students of film, science fiction, and Marxist culture will enjoy Red Alert.

Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of Reconstructionism, is the preeminent American Jewish thinker and rabbi of our times. While in the first volume of Communings of the Spirit, editor Mel Scult covers Kaplan's early years as a rabbi, in the second volume we experience through Kaplan the economic problems of the thirties and their shattering impact on the Jewish community.

The Apu Trilogy is the fifth book written by influential film critic Robin Wood and republished for a contemporary audience. Focusing on the famed trilogy from Indian director Satyajit Ray, Wood persuasively demonstrates his ability at detailed textual analysis, providing an impressively sustained reading that elucidates the complex view of life in the trilogy. Wood was one of our most insightful and committed film critics, championing films that explore the human condition. His analysis of The Apu Trilogy reveals and illuminates the films' profoundly humanistic qualities with clarity and rigor, plumbing the psychological and emotional resonances that arise from Ray's delicate balance of performance, camerawork, and visual design. Wood was the first English-language critic to write substantively about Ray's films, which made the original publication of his monograph on The Apu Trilogy unprecedented as well as impressive. Of late there has been a renewed interest in North America in the work of Satyajit Ray, yet no other critic has come close to equaling the scope and depth of his analysis. In his introduction, originally published in 1971, Wood says reactions to Ray's work were met with indifference. In response, he offers possible reasons why this occurred, including social and cultural differences and the films' slow pacing, which contemporary critics tended to associate with classical cinema. Wood notes Ray's admiration for Western film culture, including the Hollywood cinema and European directors, particularly Jean Renoir and his realist films. Assigning a chapter to each Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito, (1957), and The World of Apu, (1959), Wood goes on to explore each film more thoroughly. One of the aspects of this book that is particularly rewarding is Wood's analytical approach to the trilogy as a whole, as well as detailed attention given to each of the three films. The book, with a new preface by Richard Lippe and foreword by Barry Keith Grant, functions as a master class on what constitutes an in-depth reading of a work and the use of critical tools that are relevant to such a task. Robin Wood's The Apu Trilogy offers an excellent account of evaluative criticism that will appeal to film scholars and students alike.

Although Anne (Chana) Kleiman-who died in 2011 at the age of 101-was the first American-born Jewish woman to publish poems in Hebrew, and Annabelle (Chana) Farmelant-who is still living and occasionally publishing-wrote a substantial body of Hebrew verse from the 1940s to the 1960s, their work is virtually unknown today, even to those familiar with Hebrew literature in America. In Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant, editor Shachar Pinsker recovers the singular voices of these women, introducing their captivating and wide--ranging poetry and placing it in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts.Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores presents a bilingual edition of Kleiman and Farmelant's work in a large range of themes, moods, and styles, translated into English for the first time by Adriana X. Jacobs and Yosefa Raz. It includes Kleiman's poems that were collected and published in a 1947 U.S. volume and a selection from two of Farmelant's poetry books, published in Jerusalem in 1960 and 1961. The translators have furnished the poems with copious notes, illuminating linguistic and cultural sources of the poetry and making it more accessible to contemporary readers. Pinsker introduces the volume with a background on the poets' lives and work and a look at the state of Hebrew literature in the first half of the twentieth century. The volume also includes an unpublished essay by Anne Kleiman, addressing Hebrew poet Anda Pinkerfeld and her poetic work, which sheds an important light on the dialogue between women's Hebrew poetry written in American and in Palestine during the same period.Readers and scholars of Jewish, American, and Hebrew literature and cultural history, as well as those interested in poetry, gender, and women's studies will enjoy this unique bilingual edition.

In 1965 social scientist Charles S. Liebman published a study that boldly declared the vitality of American Jewish Orthodoxy and went on to guide scholarly investigations of the group for the next four decades. As American Orthodoxy continues to grow in geographical, institutional, and political strength, author Adam S. Ferziger argues in Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism that one of Liebman's principal definitions needs to be updated. While Liebman proposed that the "e;committed Orthodox"e; -observant rather than nominally affiliated-could be divided into two main streams: "e;church,"e; or Modern Orthodoxy, and "e;sectarian,"e; or Haredi Orthodoxy, Ferziger traces a narrowing of the gap between them and ultimately a realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Ferziger shows that significant elements within Haredi Orthodoxy have abandoned certain strict and seemingly uncontested norms. He begins by offering fresh insight into the division between the American sectarian Orthodox and Modern Orthodox streams that developed in the early twentieth century and highlights New York's Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun as a pioneering Modern Orthodox synagogue. Ferziger also considers the nuances of American Orthodoxy as reflected in Soviet Jewish activism during the 1960s and early 1970s and educational trips to Poland taken by American Orthodox young adults studying in Israel, and explores the responses of prominent rabbinical authorities to Orthodox feminism and its call for expanded public religious roles for women. Considerable discussion is dedicated to the emergence of outreach to nonobservant Jews as a central priority for Haredi Orthodoxy and how this focus outside its core population reflects fundamental changes. In this context, Ferziger presents evidence for the growing influence of Chabad Hasidism - what he terms the "e;Chabadization of American Orthodoxy."e; Recent studies, including the 2013 Pew Survey of U.S. Jewry, demonstrate that an active and strongly connected American Orthodox Jewish population is poised to grow in the coming decades. Jewish studies scholars and readers interested in history, sociology, and religion will appreciate Ferziger's reappraisal of this important group.

Bankruptcy law is a major part of the American legal landscape. More than a million individuals and thousands of businesses sought relief in the United States' ninety-three bankruptcy courts in 2014, more than twenty-seven thousand of them in the Eastern District of Michigan. In Adversity and Justice, Kevin Ball takes a closer look at the history and evolution of this court.

The Cinderella story is retold continuously in literature, illustration, music, theatre, ballet, opera, film, and other media, and folklorists have recognised hundreds of distinct forms of Cinderella plots. Cinderella Across Cultures analyses the Cinderella tale as a fascinating, multilayered, and ever-changing story constantly reinvented in different media and traditions.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, "e;Pine King"e; Justus S. Stearns was Michigan's largest producer of manufactured lumber and the owner of a prosperous coal mining operation headquartered in Stearns, Kentucky, a town he founded. Over the course of his career, Stearns would own at least thirty manufacturing businesses-making everything from finished lumber to kitchen utensils, game boards, and motors-as well as hotels, a railroad, and a power company. He was also an active member of the Republican Party who served one term as Michigan's secretary of state and a philanthropist who gave a great deal of his wealth to causes in both Michigan and Kentucky. In Justus S. Stearns: Michigan Pine King and Kentucky Coal Baron, 1845-1933, author Michael W. Nagle details Stearns's astounding range of accomplishments and explores the influence of both paternalism and Social Darwinism in his business practices. Nagle begins by addressing key events in the first few decades of Stearns's life and his initial foray into the lumber industry. Subsequent chapters explore Stearns's political career, his timber operations in Wisconsin, and his coal, lumber, and railroad operations in Kentucky and Tennessee. Nagle also details the ancillary businesses that Stearns founded or purchased in the early twentieth century, even as his Stearns Salt & Lumber Company served as the anchor of his Michigan holdings, while Stearns Coal & Lumber did the same for his operations in Kentucky. The final chapter offers an overview and analysis of Stearns's lifetime of accomplishments, including his impact on the town of Ludington, Michigan, where he maintained a residence for over fifty years. Nagle makes extensive use of primary source material from several historical archives as well as contemporary newspaper accounts, court documents, company records, and other primary sources. American history scholars, as well as general readers interested in Michigan's lumbering era and Kentucky's mining history, will enjoy this biography of an exceptionally influential businessman.

Literature has always played a central role in creating and disseminating culturally specific notions of citizenship, nationhood, and belonging. In Reconfiguring Citizenship and National Identity in the North American Literary Imagination, author Kathy-Ann Tan investigates metaphors, configurations, parameters, and articulations of U.S. and Canadian citizenship that are enacted, renegotiated, and revised in modern literary texts, particularly during periods of emergence and crisis. Tan brings together for the first time a selection of canonical and lesser-known U.S. and Canadian writings for critical consideration. She begins by exploring literary depiction of "e;willful"e; or "e;wayward"e; citizens and those with precarious bodies that are viewed as threatening, undesirable, unacceptable-including refugees and asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, deportees, and stateless people. She also considers the rights to citizenship and political membership claimed by queer bodies and an examination of "e;new"e; and alternative forms of citizenship, such as denizenship, urban citizenship, diasporic citizenship, and Indigenous citizenship. With case studies based on works by a diverse collection of authors-including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Djuna Barnes, Etel Adnan, Sarah Schulman, Walt Whitman, Gail Scott, and Philip Roth-Tan uncovers alternative forms of collectivity, community, and nation across a broad range of perspectives. In line with recent cross-disciplinary explorations in the field, Reconfiguring Citizenship and National Identity in the North American Literary Imagination shows citizenship as less of a fixed or static legal entity and more as a set of symbolic and cultural practices. Scholars of literary studies, cultural studies, and citizenship studies will be grateful for Tan's illuminating study.

The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS 1961-66) was a uniquely self-reflexive sitcom that drew on vaudevillian tropes at a time when vaudeville-based comedy variety was disappearing from television. At the same time, it reflected the liberal politics of the Kennedy era and gave equal time to home and work as it ushered in a new image of the sitcom family. In The Dick Van Dyke Show, author Joanne Morreale analyzes the series' innovative form and content that altered the terrain of the television sitcom. Morreale begins by finding the roots of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the vaudeville-based comedy variety show and the "e;showbiz"e; sitcom, even as it brought notable updates to the form. She also considers how the series reflects the social context of Kennedy's New Frontier and its impact on the television industry, as The Dick Van Dyke Show responded to criticisms of television as mass entertainment. She goes on to examine the series as an early example of quality television that also pointed to the complex narrative of today, examining the show's progressive representations of race, ethnicity, and gender that influenced the content of later sitcoms. Morreale concludes by considering The Dick Van Dyke Show's afterlife, suggesting that the various reappearances of the characters and the show itself demonstrates television's "e;transseriality."e; Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show and readers interested in American television and cultural history will appreciate this insightful reading of the series.