"Like Lionel Trilling, Susanne Klingenstein inqμires into the life of the mind in relation to American self-confidence; in a period dedicated to the ferocious obliteration, via theory, of the motivated and intentional power of individual aspiration, her study of heroic intellect stands out. Jews in the American Academy is intellectual history founded on singular figures, and reads like chapters of a compelling novel by a master psychologist."—Cynthia Oziek
Description
Susanne Klingenstein ‘s influential work reveals two important subjects: how the philosophy ans literature departments of lvy League colleges in the early twentieth century gradually opened their doors to Jewish of letters; and how this integration transformed the thinking of these Jewish professors, many of whom had been raised in Orthodox homes.
Klingenstein examines in depth the careers and works of prominent Jewish-American teachers, from Leo Wiener, the Harvard professor with thirty Ianguages at his command, to philosophy professors Harry Wolfson, Horace Kallen, and Morris Cohen, Joel Elias Spingarn, writer-critic Ludwig Lewisohn, and finally Lionel Trilling, who won the hard-fought battle in 1936 to become the first Jewish professor of English and American literature at Columbia
University.
About the Author
Susanne Klingenstein is associate professor of writing and humanistic studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also the author of Enlarging American: The Cultural Work of Jewish Literary Scholars, 1930-1990.
Series: Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art
6 x 9, 272 pages, 12 black and white illustrations
September 1998