Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, and always compelling, the stories in this collection explore the many manifestations of being Jewish in a modern and largely secular world. Jennifer Anne Moses creates characters, mostly American, who are struggling with love, relationships, faith, tradition, and most of all family and the ties that bind. A ......
In November 2020, B.J. Hollars answered a call from his father-in-law while teaching. "When will you be home?" Steve asked. "I have news." So began the Hollars family's year of plenty--a cancer diagnosis on top of the ongoing COVID pandemic, then feelings of falling short as parents, partners, and people. While Hollars traces his family's daily ......
Leonid Tsypkin, Uncensored Literature, and Soviet Jewishness
Russian-Jewish writer Leonid Tsypkin (1926-82), a doctor by trade, wrote primarily "for the drawer," fearing professional consequences if he were to publish his fiction. Despite Tsypkin's almost complete lack of readership during his lifetime, his work has received international posthumous recognition, with Susan Sontag calling his work "among the ......
Hermann Budzislawski and the Making of Twentieth-Century Socialism
In Writing Against Hitler, Daniel Siemens reconstructs the history of the struggles of socialist intellectuals in Germany from the 1920s through the post-World War II era by focusing on the life of one influential member of that group, Hermann Budzislawski (1901-78). In the 1930s, Budzislawski served as the editor in chief of the prominent ......
Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II
For two years during World War II, Nazi forces occupied large swaths of the western Soviet Union. In response to devastating losses on a contested front, Stalin first permitted and then encouraged women to join the Red Army and the resistance. Simultaneously, female civilians in occupied territory found themselves in an untenable position: they ......
Adherents to the ""zar"" cult in northern Sudan encounter spirits that are parallels of historically relevant figures in the known human world. Those possessed, usually women, meet aliens who speak about issues confronting a village such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. By manifesting spirits ......
As a child, AJ Romriell strove to obey his Mormon leaders' every rule. If he was faithful enough, he was taught, God would remove temptations. But at nineteen, returning home early from his mission after admitting his attraction to men, he was forced to make a decision: either stay the course or work to accept himself fully and risk losing family, ......
The Politics and Practice of Kenya's HIV-Prevention NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are ubiquitous in the Global South. Often international in origin, many attempt to assist local efforts to improve the lives of people often living in or near poverty. Yet their external origins often cloud their ability to impact health or quality of life, regardless of whether volunteers are local or foreign. ......
Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society
Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society makes the case that conspiracy theories are fundamentally a folklore genre, akin to and often involving other belief narratives like rumor and legend. The editors and contributors show that studying conspiracy theories using the tools of folkloristics ......
