Oksman, Tahneer: “How Come Boys Get to Keep their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (original) (raw)
2016, Contemporary Jewry
https://doi.org/10.1007/S12397-016-9168-3
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Abstract
AI
This paper explores the intersection of gender, identity, and Jewish American culture as represented in contemporary graphic memoirs. It specifically examines how female authors navigate and portray their experiences and identities through graphic narratives, contrasting these with traditional representations of masculinity in Jewish culture. The analysis highlights the unique voice and perspective of women in this genre, contributing to a broader understanding of Jewish American identity.
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The Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in Collaboration With 92Y Presents: The 7th Biennial Conney Conference on Jewish Arts Converging Movements at 92Y March 31 2019 | 92Y, 1395 Lexington Ave New York, NY 10128 1pm-1:30pm David Sperber/Jewish Orthodox Feminist Art in Israel 1:00pm-1:30pm David Sperber / Jewish Orthodox Feminist Art in Israel The feminist art movement of Jewish religious women in the United States and Israel emerged at the end of the 1990s. This paper examines Jewish feminist art being created in Israel—a country in which legislation has empowered Jewish Orthodox institutions with sole control over the personal status of its Jewish citizens. Through an examination of works by four Orthodox Jewish-Israeli women artists, I will demonstrate how they have formulated a broad, radical critique of the rabbinical institutions that govern the female body, particularly regarding menstruation, conversion, and modesty—topics that have bearing on their identity as women, Jews in general, and Orthodox Jews in particular. Considering the exclusion of women from spiritual leadership roles within the Orthodox Jewish world, I will underscore the importance of the art world as an alternative field of action through which religious feminists can make themselves heard.
Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art (review)
American Jewish History, 2001
An important topic that is barely mentioned is the role of Brooklyn College in helping to shape the borough's Jews. A number of chapters deal with education and teachers, but they do not mention that the college of choice was Brooklyn College, which, fifty years ago was overwhelmingly Jewish. Not only that, but, since at that time the preferred profession for Jewish women who actually made it to college, was education, Brooklyn College was part of the foundation of life in the borough as a whole. Another role of Brooklyn College, more specific to its Jewish students, was the solid Hebrew language and literature courses that it provided for its Jewish student body. Outstanding professors taught hundreds of graduates of the yeshivas as well as the public schools, fulfilling the required foreign language component of the bachelor's degree as well as satisfying the search for higher-level literature courses for many. A third role played by Brooklyn College was the founding of the Department of Judaic Studies as part of the revival of ethnic interest in cultural roots of the late 1960s. In part because of the size of Brooklyn's Jewish population, it became an independent department-not a program-equal in standing with the more traditional departments such as history, political science, and philosophy. College-level courses from the elementary to the advanced are offered to interested Jews (and non-Jews) on subjects such as Holocaust History, the Jewish Woman, and Modern Israel. There is even a special topics course, the Jews of Brooklyn. All in all, the Jews of Brooklyn is an admirable undertaking. I would have preferred that it not be Talmud-sized and double columned, but that was the decision of the editors and the press. It certainly captures the "feeling of Jewish Brooklyn." Sara Reguer Brooklyn College, CUNY
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This interdisciplinary study examines the social and cultural contribution of the Jewish feminist art movement that developed beginning in the 1990s in the two main centers of world Jewry, Israel and the United States of America. It is the first in-depth study dedicated to feminist art critical of Jewish tradition, halakha (Jewish law), and religious institutions. The study interrogates this art in the context of feminist art in both the US and Israel and in relation to the various feminisms of the Jewish religious spheres. The dissertation illuminates the reception of feminist Jewish art in the two art
As Andrea Most points out, every comic artist dealing with Jewish characters has to decide “how to represent a Jewish body and how to determine what exactly a Jewish narrative looks like” . Hence, “[t]he choices each artist makes about how to represent Jewish bodies tell a story about the shifting status of Jewishness in contemporary […] popular culture” . In fact, when it comes to gendered Jewish identities, the body plays a crucial role. In her expressionistic (auto-)biographical comics Jewish-American Underground cartoonist Aline Kominsky Crumb addresses the central role of the body for the representation and cultural construction of Jewish women, showing that [..] the Jewish body is always inevitably a gendered body” . Paying particular attention to comic-specific modes of (visual) representation, my paper explores how Kominsky Crumb’s distinctive style manages to generate Jewish Gender Trouble. As will be shown, her ‘grotesque’ and cartoony drawings not only question the reliability and authenticity of the things depicted, they also undermine established notions of what is considered to be suitable, acceptable and beautiful to look at – especially when it comes to representations of the female (Jewish) body. In this respect, the gendered Jewish identities found in the comics of Kominsky Crumb must be understood as constructed, performative concepts, of doing gender and doing (Jewish) identity.
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Mexico for a decade, studying the arts and cultures of the Pueblo people and their ancestors: Native Americans who have lived and worked in the Southwest for millennia. There I found an aesthetic that integrated core cultural values within a traditional art form that is close to my heart: the creation of pottery for daily use. As I learned about Pueblo culture and its visual arts, I came to understand the ability of a people to incorporate its values, aesthetics and beliefs into its most cherished art forms. I gave my hand to it through my own work with clay, integrating a heritage of Jewish feminist values and western European technical skills with aesthetics derived from an extensive study of the ancient Southwest. Eventually, I hungered for a deeper context for my own artwork, and a place to express a core Jewish identity in a City that is home to the largest urban Jewish population in the world, New York. There, I spent my time earning a graduate degree, and absorbing the sights, sounds and tastes of a unique bustling metropolis. I yearned to go inside, and to contact some of those whom I considered to be 'my people' in a more in-depth way: other Jewish artists. Thus began my initial incentive for these portraits. And in going in and getting close, I found friends and cohorts who modeled new ways of Jewish Being 1 in the world: artists who integrate, in very different ways, their diverse identities and their personal and communal beliefs into their art and work. These artists became for me, then, teachers; 'rabbis' (the title originally simply meant, 'my teachers') who have taught me through their lives and practice; and in studying, I have learned deeply from them. It is my hope that the writings and understandings that formed the thesis make a larger place for others seeking direction in this very new field: a way of thinking about ourselves and our work as artists, as Jews and as creative thinkers in the world.
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Since the Depression, Jews have filled the ranks of professional photographers in the United States. Recently several scholars have suggested that work by these American Jews constitutes a discourse or school. Our contribution to this conversation examines photographic engagements with passing, the stage business of getting by. We focus on three matters: everyday dynamics of the look as given and taken; photography as a series of nominations and promotions that begin even as the shutter is being pressed; and the harnessing of that privileged stare with which people view photos. 1 While exploring implications of these issues, we have navigated uneven grounds of comparison. Our preliminary observations were tested by the awareness among younger photographers that they faced new challenges; they experienced major demographic shifts in American Jewish life as personal, generational events. Yet Jews with cameras have continued to be caught up with the subject(ivity) of hiding and seeking and showing off. Their work has helped to renew photography as an endeavor requiring shared risk. Photo scholar Jane Livingston named the "New York School" of photography and located it between 1936 and 1963. 2 Around 1936, photographic horizons broadened dramatically in the United States. The Roosevelt Administration's FSA publicity project extended the reach of advocacy photography; the left-wing New York Photo League was formed; Henry Luce launched Life magazine; and Harper's Bazaar underwent a fundamental graphic and strategic makeover. For thirty years Life was the big show for photojournalists. Unsurprisingly, various photographers known for their street The Photographic Arena of Looks 2 photography, including Lisette Model, Robert Frank, and William Klein, failed to catch on at the magazine. 3 More surprisingly, some of them found an audience in fashion periodicals, "our art magazines," said Klein. Only at publications like Harper's could "you see pictures of Brassai or Cartier Bresson." 4 Early on, the New York School included redemptive projects that enlisted photographers as witnesses and reformers. They made exhilarating, unsettling contributions to street photography, reframing the routine improvisations of being among other people in the city. After World War II, their work became increasingly alive to the speed and noise of New York. The New York School began to draw scrutiny commensurate with its growing influence on photography across the United States.
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References (1)
- Josh Edelglass is a freelance illustrator whose work has appeared in several newspapers and publications including Tikkun Magazine and The New Haven Review, and most recently in the Jewish Comix Anthology (Alternative History Press, 2015), which features the work of forty Jewish artists such as Art Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar, Will Eisner, Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudhal, and others. His clients include Amherst College, Brown University, Camp Ramah, Trilogy Software, Eggplant Productions, and his illustrations and musings can be found at www.MotionPicturesComics.com.
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The small group of artists who visually grapple with the discord between traditional Jewish practice and contemporary feminist ethos are creating a fascinating new area of religious discourse. They have initiated a form of religious commentary which could not have existed without their own familiarity with religious text and ritual since they examine not cultural Judaism, but traditional Jewish practice. Nor could this commentary have existed prior to the advent of feminism, which empowered women to join the art world and to express their feminist perspective on Jewish practice. Their American identity feeds into their empowerment as minority artists, yet that same identity created an appealing universalist pushback for years which has kept Jewish artwork with overtly religious, non- cultural motifs to a minimum in America. The contemporary artists interviewed by the author in this work approach conflicts of women in Judaism from two different angles: reactions to Judaism’s women-specific roles, expectations, and rituals; and the opposite, the absence of women in the tradition where women should rightfully be mentioned. This paper analyzes the approach of five contemporary American female Jewish artists whose work addresses the absence of women in traditional Jewish rituals, public life, legal processes, and original texts: Carol Hamoy, Helène Aylon, Susan Kaplow, Hana Iverson, and Andi Arnovitz. These artists were chosen because their work is directly inspired by their personal conflict with the often passive, “invisible” role of women in Judaism and specifically grapples with traditional sources and/or rituals. Despite their own conflict, none choose to destroy, ignore, or alter the sources or text, instead preferring to create art which raises their conflict to the fore in a more creative and thought-provoking way.
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