Glass Half Full: Jewish American Culture in the 20th Century
FAIN: FT-53878-06
Anne Elizabeth Goldman
California State University (Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609)
The project is an expansive assessment of 20th-century Jewish American culture in two parts. Section one reconsiders rituals of mourning, definitions of exilic identity, and explorations of loss. The essays, critical and reflective, discuss intellectual history as bordered by familial history. Section two considers contributions in physics, painting, music, and literature.(Figures examined include Alfred Einstein, Richard Feynman, Mark Rothko, Marc Chagall, Stan Getz, George Gershwin, Henry Roth and Saul Bellow.) I wish to recast the nature of modern Jewish American historiography, conventionally inclined toward tragedy, as well as to reflect upon the relationships art imposes upon history and memory.