Intimate radicals and radical intimacies : East European Jewish women in the early twentieth-century Anglo-American Imaginary
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation tells the story of romantic ties between a handful of East European Jewish women and patrician-born, Anglo-American intellectuals on the radical left in the early twentieth century. Through the use of personal archives, published and unpublished book manuscripts, memoirs, and poetry, the English and Yiddish press, and oral histories, it adds a much needed chapter to existing scholarship about Jews and modern American discourses of race, class, and gender. I argue that these interclass and interethnic relationships were an attempt on both sides to transcend the provincial trappings of their births - whether it be the East European shtetl or victorian America - and lay claim to new modern, cosmopolitan identities. My research demonstrates that young, Anglo-American intellectuals and writers articulated a sense of crisis about the United States by exploring emerging racial paradigms, shifting definitions of masculinity, and new modes in American culture through their desires for young East European Jewish women. At the same time, I challenge existing models of Jewish women's Americanization that rely on traditional feminine roles of marriage, domesticity, and motherhood. I argue instead that the romantic interests of these East European Jewish women in Anglo-American men were an attempt to meld class aspirations and a desire to integrate with deeply felt political views rooted in foreign revolutionary traditions and cosmopolitan identities. As committed socialists, American-born men and East European Jewish women hoped to put ideological principles into practice at the most intimate level
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Walters, Ashley Elizabeth |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Zipperstein, Steven J, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Zipperstein, Steven J, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Freedman, Estelle B, 1947- |
| Thesis advisor | Michels, Tony |
| Thesis advisor | Rodrigue, Aron |
| Degree committee member | Freedman, Estelle B, 1947- |
| Degree committee member | Michels, Tony |
| Degree committee member | Rodrigue, Aron |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Ashley Elizabeth Walters |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Ashley Elizabeth Walters
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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