1st Edition

Jews and Jewishness in British Children's Literature

By Madelyn Travis Copyright 2013
222 Pages
by Routledge

222 Pages
by Routledge

222 Pages
by Routledge

In a period of ongoing debate about faith, identity, migration and culture, this timely study explores the often politicised nature of constructions of one of Britain’s longest standing minority communities. Representations in children’s literature influenced by the impact of the Enlightenment, the Empire, the Holocaust and 9/11 reveal an ongoing concern with establishing, maintaining or... Read more

Introduction 1. Moneylenders and Misers: the Eighteenth Century to the Second World War 2. ‘Conversion’ to Englishness: Refugees and Belonging 3. The Hyphen Problem: British-Jewish Identity 4. Mother, Monster, Mensch: Jews and Gender 5. ‘Good Jews’ or ‘Bad Jews’?: The Jewish Question Revisited Conclusion

Biography

Madelyn J. Travis is an Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She has published on historical and contemporary British and American children’s literature and is currently researching Jewish childhood in England. This is her first book.

'An original and significant addition to understanding of the interaction of British culture with the Jews and "Jews."' - Professor David Feldman, author of Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture1840-1914

'The book is a valiant effort to address the intersection of Jewish studies and children's literature...Travis covers such a wide range of literature and addresses so many salient topics...This work has the potential to stimulate serious investigation of such topics.' - Barbara Thiede, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 2014