PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

JOHNSON, SETH WILLIAM, Ph.D., May 2014 ENGLISH HISTORY, MYTH AND SECULARISM ACROSS THE BORDERLANDS: THE WORK OF MICHAEL CHABON (317 PP.) Director of Dissertation: Lewis Fried From the publication of his Master's thesis turned first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon has enjoyed immense critical and commercial success. Yet, to date, scholarship has remained in its infancy. This study traces two common and related themes as they evolve throughout his career: his celebration of genre fiction and his exploration of the intersection between the secular--Jewish, American-Jewish and unhyphenated American culture--and the sacred. The blending of often ghettoized genres, such as science fiction, mystery, comic books and horror, with sacred texts, stories and folklore both elevates the so-called "lower" art forms and reengages history, myth and sacred stories as merely literary genres with an enhanced cultural significance. In addition, this dissertation seeks to illuminate Chabon's representation of Jewishness in America, throughout his body of work. Chabon consistently raises questions regarding the nature of Judaism in America, asking whether one's Jewishness can be largely cultural or whether it is necessarily defined by religious adherence. Though many of Chabon's characters may not be overtly religious, they have not forgotten their roots. Chabon depicts a generation of American Jews who are more comfortable with their place in America, than many of the American-Jewish writers who came before him. He sees contemporary American Jewish culture as one that maintains its traditions and celebrates its history, but can exist outside of religion, in which American Jews can be both Jewish and largely secular. This project aims to show that Chabon is part of a continuum that is constantly reassessing American Judaism, and in good company with his many American-Jewish literary predecessors (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lewis Fried Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Babacar M'Baye Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yoshinobu Hakutani Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sara Newman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Carol Salus Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Bible; Literature; Religion

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Germanic Languages and Literatures

Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance explores the relationship between African Americans and Eastern European immigrant Jews (Yiddish-speaking / Ashkenazic Jews) by examining the depictions of each in their respective literatures. The thrust of this project addresses the representations of African Americans in Yiddish literature. An investigation of the depictions of Jews by Harlem Renaissance writers can contribute to the understanding of an African American/Yiddish interface in which attitudes towards each other are played and written out. This linkage of African American and Jewish history, traditions and reflections regarding identity, culture, and language appears at a significant point in the grand narrative of ethnicity and race ideology in the United States. For Yiddish writers, their works regarding African Americans revealed their projection of what it meant to be Black, just as those of Harlem Renaissance writers projected their concept of what it meant to be Jewish, all in a milieu which saw the redefinition of what it meant to be black, to be white, and to be American. Yiddish writers addressed concepts of Blackness and Jewishness with an understanding of what could be gained or lost; the push to become American, the opportunity for social, political and economic mobility and racial alterity was countered by the pull of conflict with respect to assimilation, American conceptualization of exclusion based upon race, and a Jewish consciousness which rejected both.

Committee: David Miller PhD (Committee Chair); Neil Jacobs PhD (Committee Member); Bernd Fischer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Literature; Black History; Comparative Literature; Judaic Studies; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups