Coming Out Jewish

This text explores the idea of "Jewishness" as a problem of racial/ethnic identity in the modern and post-modern world. Offering an analysis of representation of Jewishness in Germany, Britain, Australia and the US, Jon Stratton examines the experience of being an "Othered" people in the modern era. He argues that "Jewishness" is being understood in an increasingly, secular and non-essentialist way. Divided into three sections, "Coming Out Jewish" first deals with the experience of assimilation, examining the ambivalent place of Jews in British society, relating assimilation to the work of Freud and Derrida, and tracing the persistence of what Stratton calls "ghetto thinking" through successive generations. In the second section Stratton turns to the formation of the nation state, examining the parallel rise of modern anti-Semitism and exploring issues of Diaspora and migration. The final section explores the changing place of Jews in Australia under the White Australia policy and the new multiculturalism, and considers the Jewish origins of cultural pluralism in the United States, concluding with a discussion of the Jewishness of "Seinfeld" . Addressing issues of migration, assimi

"This exciting new book trains our critical attentions on the way Jewishness travels in popular culture and in Cultural Studies. "Coming Out Jewish is a welcome addition to the vibrancy of the new Jewish Cultural Studies."-Miriam Peskowitz, Emory University "A brilliantly anxious reading of the state of Jewish identity. Jon Stratton has marked the cultural sites where an occluded, unspoken self-image and a history of given representations might meet. "Coming out Jewish is a work of recovery and innovation."-Andrew Renton, Lecturer, Art History & Theoretical Studies, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London "This book makes a crucial bridge between the newly emerging Jewish Studies and Cultural Studies that will be essential reading for critics in both fields as well as all those concerned with issues of identity and multiculturalism."-Nick Mirzoeff, Associate Professor of Art, SUNY Stony Brook

Jon Stratton is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Curtin University of Technology, Australia