Penn Press Log

Paul's Pick: How the Golem Came to Prague, a Free Article from Jewish Quarterly Review

Paul's pick for May is "How the Golem Came to Prague"  by Edan Dekel and David Gantt Gurley. The article appears in Spring 2013 issue of Jewish Quarterly Review.

This article examines the emergence of the Golem legend associated with the Maharal of Prague in the first half of the nineteenth century, with specific attention to the innovations found in two little-known versions by important Jewish literary figures of the era: the Bohemian-born Viennese poet and editor Ludwig Frankl and the Danish writer Meir Aaron Goldschmidt.  These versions, it is argued, reveal several crucial mechanisms that help explain the shift from a Golem tale distributed among various individual places and rabbis, to one with little or no specificity at all, and finally to the Prague version that dominates the subsequent literary and artistic manifestations of the legend.

Click here to download this free article and learn more about Jewish Quarterly Review.

Check the Penn Press Log in June for Paul's next pick.

Daniel Boyarin Mellon Lectures on the Babylonian Talmud

Next week, Daniel Boyarin, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, will give a series of Mellon Lectures on the Babylonian Talmud and its relationship to the Diaspora.

The series, titled "A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora," consists of three talks: "Dispersing Diaspora: The Talmud as Diasporist Manifesto" (Monday, February 18 at 5:00 p.m.), "The Philology of Diaspora: The Talmud Enacts Diaspora" Tuesday, February 19 at 5:00 p.m.), and  "Searching for the Routes: The Talmud Makes Diasporas" (Thursday, February 21, 5:00 p.m.).

All three lectures will be held at the University of Pennsylvania, Terrace Room of Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Please visit Penn's Jewish Studies Program events page for more details.

This Week's New Books: Animal Encounters, Intimate Enemies, and Next Year in Marienbad

Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain Susan Crane 296 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4458-8 | $59.95 | £39.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0630-2 | $59.95 | £39.00 A volume in the Middle Ages Series Thinking about animals and living with them are vital aspects of medieval experience. Animal Encounters explores saints' lives, hunting treatises, bestiaries, and other genres to discover how various species take part in culture making, revealing that cross-species relationships transform both their animal and their human participants.

Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru Kimberly Theidon 488 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 2 illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4450-2 | $75.00 | £49.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0661-6 | $75.00 | £49.00 A volume in the Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights series "A very important work for the fields of anthropology and human rights. . . . Intimate Enemies is a unique, path-breaking ethnography of community responses to situations of extreme violence, of the clash of armed rebels seeking to overthrow the state and counterinsurgency soldiers."--Kay Warren, Brown University Drawing on years of research in the highlands of Ayacucho, Kimberly Theidon explores how Peruvians are rebuilding individual lives and collective existence following twenty years of armed conflict. The micropolitics of reconciliation practiced there complicates the way we understand transitional justice and coexistence in the aftermath of war.

Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture Mirjam Zadoff. Translated by William Templer 320 pages | 6 x 9 | 20 illus. Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-4466-3 | $49.95 | £32.50 Hardcover | ISBN 978-0-8122-0755-2 | $49.95 | £32.50 A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series "A charming, highly readable, and scholarly contribution to the cultural history of the Jewish bourgeoisie of central and eastern Europe. With wit and learning Mirjam Zadoff has elevated Marienbad to the rank of a Jewish 'lieu de mémoire.'"--Saul Friedlander, University of California, Los Angeles Next Year in Marienbad draws an engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the spa towns of Carlsbad, Marienbad, and Franzensbad, from the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s.

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson. Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

This Week's New Books: The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis, The Decadent Republic of Letters, Shakespeare's Stationers, and Conversion and Narrative

The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis Naftali S. Cohn 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 5 illus. Cloth | ISBN 978-0-8122-4457-1 | $69.95 | £45.50 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0746-0 | $69.95 | £45.50 A  volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series Naftali S. Cohn provides an innovative understanding of the rabbinic authors of the Mishnah and their intense focus on the Temple. He contends that the memory of the Temple served a political function for the rabbis, arguing for their own importance within the complex social landscape of Jewish society in Roman Palestine.  "A learned, nuanced, and well-written study of an important theme in a foundational text of rabbinic Judaism. Cohn shows that we must look outside rabbinic literature if we are to place the Mishnah in a meaningful context. Well done."--Shaye J. D. Cohen, Harvard University

The Decadent Republic of Letters: Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community from Baudelaire to Beardsley Matthew Potolsky 256 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth | ISBN 978-0-8122-4449-6 | $59.95 | £39.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0733-0 | $59.95 | £39.00 A  volume in the Haney Foundation Series The Decadent Republic of Letters revises the longstanding view of decadence as a movement defined by escapism and sociopolitical withdrawal. The book argues that decadent writers and artists from Charles Baudelaire to Aubrey Beardsley addressed a cosmopolitan audience united by taste rather than language, geography, or national identity.  "Potolsky offers a fresh and original contribution to the study of decadence and succeeds in showing how the movement is not a dusty relic of the nineteenth century, but a provocative and relevant intervention into contemporary issues. In true decadent manner, Potolsky approaches his subject perversely, arguing that we should look not at what decadence rejects but instead at what its proponents valorize. The result is a perspective that emphasizes engagement over withdrawal and renunciation. Decadence emerges from this analysis an exciting, revitalized ideology, one that suggests new ways of approaching contemporary debates."--Melanie Hawthorne, Texas A&M University

Shakespeare's Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography Edited by Marta Straznicky 376 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus. Cloth | ISBN 978-0-8122-4454-0 | $75.00 | £49.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0738-5 | $75.00 | £49.00 A volume in the Material Texts series Edited by Marta Straznicky, this seminal collection is the first to explore the multiple and intersecting forms of agency exercised by Shakespeare's stationers in the design, production, marketing, and distribution of his printed works.  "The goal of this collection is nothing short of a fundamental shift in Shakespearean textual criticism, and it achieves this goal with aplomb. The essays are original, substantial, and make a genuine contribution to the field."--Eric Rasmussen, University of Nevada

Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic Ryan Szpiech 328 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth | ISBN 978-0-8122-4471-7 | $59.95 | £39.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0761-3 | $59.95 | £39.00 A  volume in the Middle Ages Series Szpiech draws on medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim polemics to investigate the role of narrative in the representation of conversion. By investigating conversion not as individual experience but as expression of communal visions of history, he shows how the narratives dramatize the conflict of ideas in disputational writing.  "This impressive book bridges the fields of religious studies and comparative literature in order to produce close and sophisticated readings of conversion narratives from the later Middle Ages across a broad array of languages (Latin, Castilian/Catalan, Arabic, and Hebrew). Very few scholars can move so gracefully among these languages and areas of scholarship while offering insights from the minutiae of philological analysis to high literary theory, reflections on the nature of religion, and notions of the self."--Jonathan Decter, Brandeis University

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson. Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

This Week's New Books: Death by Effigy, Exquisite Mixture, and Textual Mirrors

Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition Luis R. Corteguera 240 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4439-7 | $39.95 | £26.00 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0705-7 | $39.95 | £26.00 A volume in the Early Modern Americas series On July 21, 1578, a small Mexican town awoke to the news of a scandal. Nailed to the door of its church was a double-faced effigy denouncing a neighbor as a Jew who should burn at the stake. Nine trials over the course of four years revealed a story of dishonor, revenge, and the Inquisition's relentless determination to defend its symbols.

Exquisite Mixture: The Virtues of Impurity in Early Modern England Wolfram Schmidgen 280 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4442-7 | $59.95 | £39.00 Ebook | ISBN 978-0-8122-0718-7 | $59.95 | £39.00 A volume in the Haney Foundation Series Exquisite Mixture examines the writing of Robert Boyle, John Locke, Daniel Defoe, and others in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain who advocated mixture as a critical element of this belief in English superiority: mixture could produce superior languages, new species, flawless ideas, and resilient civil societies.

Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self Dina Stein 248 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4436-6 | $79.95 | £52.00 Ebook 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0694-4 | $79.95 | £52.00 A volume in the Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion series In Textual Mirrors, Dina Stein draws on literary theory, folklore studies, and semiotics to closely examine midrashic tales in which self-reflexivity operates as a central element. Within these texts, rabbinic discourse itself becomes the object of reflection, both complicating and confirming its religious and ideological principles.

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson. Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

This Week's New Books: "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana," The Conversion of Herman the Jew, The Folkstories of Children,

Now in Paperback
"The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana": Two Plays of Captivity
Miguel de Cervantes. Edited and translated by Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika
208 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 map
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4209-6 | $34.95 | £23.00
Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2215-9 | $19.95 | £13.00

The first English translation of two captivity plays by Cervantes, set in Algiers and Constantinople. Featuring a lively cast of corsairs, captives, and renegades, they offer important insights into early modern Spain's conception of the world of Islam. Read more . . .

 

 

Now in Paperback
The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History, and Fiction in the Twelfth Century
Jean-Claude Schmitt. Translated by Alex J. Novikoff
320 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus.
Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4254-6 | $59.95 | £39.00
Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2219-7 | $26.50 | £17.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

Jean-Claude Schmitt examines a unique and controversial conversion narrative to explore its meaning within the society and culture of its period as well as what it has to tell us about the way historians think and write. Read more . . .

 

Now in Paperback
The Folkstories of Children
Brian Sutton-Smith
328 pages | 6 x 9
Paper 1981 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1108-5 | $22.50 | £15.00
A volume in the Publications of the American Folklore Society series

The Folkstories of Children, first published in 1981, features nearly five hundred stories that were volunteered by fifty children between the ages of two and ten and transcribed word for word. The stories are organized chronologically by age of the teller, revealing the progression of the children's cognition and verbal competence. Read more . . .

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson at jorobin@upenn.edu.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Between Christian and Jew-- Now Available

Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250-1391
Paola Tartakoff
264 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus.
Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4421-2 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

"An outstanding book and a compelling read, this is the first thorough account of a trial of Jews by the papal inquisition, under whose jurisdiction Jews did not normally fall. This is also the first work to attempt an overview of the phenomenon of Jewish conversion to Christianity in medieval Spain prior to the watershed of 1391, and Tartakoff's conclusions regarding the motives for conversion are very important."--Mark Meyerson, University of Toronto

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Pawel Maciejko wins AAJR's Baron Prize for The Mixed Multitude

Congratulations to Pawel Maciejko, winner of the Salo W. Baron Prize for the outstanding first book in Jewish studies published in 2011. The American Academy of Jewish Research selected Maciejko for his work on The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816.  Maciejko is currently lecturer in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The AAJR will present the award to him at its annual luncheon in December.

Old Worlds, New Mirrors--Now in Paperback

Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought
Moshe Idel
336 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4130-3 | $59.95 | £39.00
Paper 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2210-4 | $26.50 | £17.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

"A brilliant and often illuminating exposition and critique of the role that Jewish mysticism has played in much of twentieth-century Western thought. Idel uncovers the many ways in which external sources, rather than traditional texts and practices, have informed accounts of Jewish mysticism."--Jewish Review of Books

In Old Worlds, New Mirrors Moshe Idel turns his gaze on figures as diverse as Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka and Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano and Paul Celan, Abraham Heschel and George Steiner to reflect on their relationships to Judaism in a cosmopolitan, mostly European, context. Read more . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Paul's Pick for May, a Free Article on the Paris Mosque from The Jewish Quarterly Review

Every month, Paul Chase in the Penn Press Journals department invites our blog readers to download a complimentary article from one of our many scholarly journals.

Paul's Pick for May is "Did the Paris Mosque Save Jews? A Mystery and Its Memories" by University of Cincinnati historian Ethan Katz. The article appears in the Spring 2012 issue of The Jewish Quarterly Review.

Katz's JQR article offers the first scholarly analysis of the collective memory and the history of the Grand Mosque of Paris as a haven for Jews during the Holocaust. The 2011 French feature film Les Hommes Libres brought unprecedented attention to the mosque’s efforts to save Jews during the Occupation. Many press accounts and even “expert” commentaries on the film conveyed an almost breathless enthusiasm and framed it as an invaluable pedagogical tool, but Katz reminds us of the conflicting historical evidence around this story. Katz sheds new light on how Jews, Muslims, and broader French society seek to confront the shifting stakes of the Holocaust and the Second World War in the twenty-first century.

To download this free article and learn more about The Jewish Quarterly Review, click here.

Check the Penn Press Log on June 15 for Paul's next pick.