NEW COURSE
COMPLIT 163X – Jewish Languages and Literatures in America
Semester: Spring
Offered: 2026
Instructor: Kathryn Hellerstein
Meeting Time: T, Th 10:30-11:45am
What makes Jewish American literature Jewish? What makes it American? This course will address these questions about ethnic literature through fiction, poetry, drama, and other writings by Jews in America, from their arrival in 1654 to the present. We will discuss how Jewish identity and ethnicity shape literature. We will consider how form and language develop as Jewish writers “immigrate” from Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages to American English. Using the collection, Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, we will read a variety of authors, including Isaac Mayer Wise, Emma Lazarus, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Celia Dropkin, Abraham Cahan, Anzia Yezierska, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, Allegra Goodman. Students who take this course will explore the ways that Jewish culture intertwines with American culture in literature.
For more details please visit the Harvard Course Catalog.