The Sound of 'New Jews': David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
The Sound of 'New Jews': David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein
Abstract
The author reads the "soundwork" — radio and podcast writing and performance — of two Montreal novelists, David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein, as exemplary cases of the representational patterns that scholars attending to American popular culture since the 1990s have recently begun to analyze under the rubric of "New Jews." Focusing particularly on work that has been broadcast on the popular radio shows/podcasts This American Life (1995–) and WireTap with Jonathan Goldstein (2004–15), the author surveys the representational strategies through which these performers invoke Jewishness and Canadianness over hundreds of hours of scripted and improvised audio performances. The author argues that the remarkable taken-for-granted approach to representation in Rakoff's and Goldstein's work is due, at least in part, to the positioning of Jews and Canadians as potentially overlooked minorities in the late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century United States.
Publication
Studies in American Jewish Literature
Volume
Vol. 35
Issue
no. 2
Pages
233-256
Date
2016
Language
en
Citation
Lambert, Josh. “The Sound of ‘New Jews’: David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein.” Studies in American Jewish Literature Vol. 35, no. 2 (2016): 233–256.
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