6 x 9. 208 pgs. (2005) Paper 978-0-472-06908-8 $22.95S  Available Add to Cart Search this Book's Content About the Book Praise Look Inside Subjects American Studies / Jewish Studies / Media and Communication--T.V. & Radio / Theater and Performance

Acting Jewish
Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen

Henry Bial

Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Examines how notions of Jewishness have been conveyed in a range of television, stage, and film productions since the end of World War II

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Praise for the Book

"Bial's book is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the links between Jewish identity and the performing arts in the U.S., while also demonstrating wider cultural processes in the construction and reception of ethnicities more generally on stage and screen. Its interweaving of archival material, cultural and performance analysis, and a range of theoretical perspectives makes it a model for interdisciplinary work in the field."
---William McEvoy, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 2007

"Coming on a wave of scholarship dealing with Jews in American popular culture and the provisional nature of Jewish identity, this study stands out as particularly smart and incisive. Its significance lies primarily in its superb and, I think, groundbreaking theoretical framework...
Acting Jewish provides the most cogent recent framework yet for understanding Jewish American representation, and has widespread application to other groups as well. More largely, Bial uses his scholarship to get at the heart of Jewish American faith and identity today. He does so in a way that is both witty and sincere, accessible and substantive. This balancing act is in the best of Jewish traditions."
---Harley Erdman, Theatre Research International

"Bial's well-researched study is most informative and learnedly contextualizes the work of Jewish American artists in relation to both the Jewish community's problem of identity, which is fair to impart, and the concerns of a non-Jewish or imagined, universal American audience. Bial's Acting Jewish is most persuasive and critical because it shows that Jewish American artists did use "double coding" in many of their works."
---William Ferleman, Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance

"Acting Jewish is a fresh contribution to performance studies and an invaluable resource for social historians and contemporary literary and cultural theorists. As he complicates the performance of racial authenticity, Bial mines new interpretations from the past sixty years of Jewish American Performance. The text is unusually readable and moving, unpretentious and candid. Bial skillfully compelled this reader to keep the pages turning---an accolade for the surprising subtleness of this book, one that I enthusiastically recommend."
---Jeff Wax, Theater Journal

"In this new and interesting study, scholar Henry Bial examines the phenomenon of Jews in entertainment from the perspective of a cultural anthropologist, tackling the question of how images of Jews on the American stage and screen have evolved over the past half-century. "
---Jewish Book World

"Bial's work is an accessible, smart inquiry into the complex nature of what it means to act or appear Jewish, for whom this appearance is important, and what situational elements must be in place for a particular work or performance to 'read' as Jewish."
---American Jewish History