Visualizing Jewish Narrative PDF Download

Over the past several years, there has been growing scholarly interest in the relationship of Jews to the visual narratives presented in the newspaper "funnies," comic books, and graphic novels. Part of this stems from a developing focus in Jewish studies on the intersections between identity and popular culture. Comics, the argument goes, constitute one of those mass outlets, along with television and Hollywood films, in which Jews played a dominant role and were able to largely define the genre. Within literary studies, this nascent interest in Jewish comics can be linked to a broader scholarly focus on comics and the ways in which they represent ethno-racial identity, and how traditionally marginalized writers and illustrators have been able to exert increased control over representations of their own ethnic communities. Visualizing Jewish Narrative aims to examine the entire universe of comics and graphic novels from a "Jewish" perspective. The contributors explore the involvement of Jewish writers and artists and the presence of Jewish motifs in many different comic visual media. They come from different academic disciplines, adopt varying methodologies, and cover a broad swath of time (the early twentieth century to the present) and regions (Europe, America, and Israel). This broad and inclusive scope reflects the diversity found in Jewish comics and graphic novels themselves. With studies ranging from comics based on the Old Testament to golem and Talmudic imagery, Spiegelman's Maus and other Holocaust narratives, stories of immigration and assimilation, Jewish humor in Mad magazine, and the Jewishness of superheroes, this book will not only present much of interest to a general reader, but it also contains ideal supplementary materials for university courses on Jewish culture; American literature; the representation of migration, assimilation, and trauma; the graphic depiction of biblical and folkloric motifs; superheroes; and the production of humor.