Rachel Rubinstein

Biography
Rachel Rubinstein, assistant professor of American literature and Jewish Studies, received her B.A. from Yale University and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her teaching and research interests address ethnicity, race, and immigration in the United States, with a particular focus on moments of cross- ethnic encounter and representation. She serves on the editorial board of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History and recently co-edited Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon: Essays on Literature and Culture in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse (Harvard U Press, 2008). Her work has appeared in American Quarterly and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. Her book, Members of the Tribe: Native America in the Jewish Imagination (Wayne State University Press, 2010), examines interventions by Jewish writers into an ongoing American fascination with the imagined American Indian. She teaches courses in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and Jewish literature.

Education
Ph.D., Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University (2003)

B.A., English, Yale University (1993)

= Upcoming Courses =

Fall 2011
= Current Courses =

HACU 191 Yiddish Literature and Culture
Yiddish was the language of European Jewry for nearly 1,000 years, which produced a rich legacy of folklore, legend, music, drama, poetry, fiction, and film. Recently in the United States and elsewhere we have seen an effort to recuperate, recover, and even re-define this "lost world:" in the resurgence of Eastern European "klezmer" music, in the creation of the National Yiddish Book Center, in Yiddish courses on college campuses, and in "Queer Yiddish." This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the broad and rich range of Yiddish cultural production, concentrating on literature, drama, and film. We will dip into Yiddish folklore and popular culture, performance and theatre, modernism and radicalism, kitsch and high art, and reflect upon the complicated emotions of mourning, memory, sentimentality, nostalgia, political resistance, fantasy, and desire that fuel today's Yiddish revival. No knowledge of Yiddish language is required. Learning Goals: MCP, REA, WRI, PRJ

HACU 238 Myths of America
This course investigates the imaginative, mythic, historical, and aesthetic meanings of "America," from its earliest incarnations through the mid-nineteenth century, and the ways in which the "national imaginary" has continually been challenged, shaped and pressured by the presence of radical and marginal groups and individuals. We will read both major and unfamiliar works of the colonial, revolutionary, early republic and antebellum years, and examine how these works embody, envision, revise, and respond to central concepts and tropes of national purpose and identity. Our conversations will address the spiritual and religious underpinnings of American nationhood; exploration, conquest, and nature; notions of individualism, progress, improvement, and success; race, ethnicity, class, and gender; alternative nationalisms and communities. This course is ideal for students seeking to ground and fortify their study of nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, history and culture. Fulfills Distribution Requirements, Learning Goals: PRJ,REA,WRI

= Previously Taught Courses =

American Ethnics: Texts and Contexts (Fall 2003, Fall 2004)

Contemporary Jewish American Fiction (Spring 2004)

Imagining the Other: Blacks, Indians, and Jews in America (Spring 2004, Spring 2006)

The Holocaust in America (Fall 2004)

Jewish Modernism / Modernism’s Jews (January 2005)

Radicals and Reformers: Literature and Culture of Jewish American Activism (Spring 2005)

Myths of America (Spring 2005, Fall 2008)

Contemporary Ethnic American Writing (Fall 2005, Fall 2007)

Demons, Tricksters and Stand-up Comics in the Jewish Imagination (Fall 2005)

Art and Exile (co-taught with Karen Koehler, Spring 2006)

Yiddish Literature and Culture (Fall 2006, Spring 2008)

Radicals and Reformers in Twentieth Century U.S. Literature (Fall 2006)

The Rise of Secular Jewish Culture (co-taught with James Wald, Fall 2007, Spring 2009, Spring 2010)

New Jewish Identities in Post-World War II American Culture (Spring 2008)

Elementary Yiddish: Language and Culture (January 2008, January 2009, January 2010)

Creative Betrayals: Secular Jewish Literature from the Bible Through Modernity (Fall 2008)

Between Race and Culture: Representing Jews and Others in American and British Literature (co-taught with Lise Sanders, Spring, 2009)

American Literature at the Turn of the Century (Fall 2010)

Independent Studies
Fall 2008: "Holocaust Historiophoty" with David Axel Kurtz