Upcoming Work From Writing Professor Tahneer Oksman
May is shaping up to be a great month for Dr. Oksman! Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Language and Communication and Media Arts Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D., was just featured in a new book called Matrilineal Dissent: Women Writers and Jewish American Literary History. And on Monday, May 13, she will moderate a roundtable discussion with other writers and editors who contributed to it!
Matrilineal Dissent, published by Wayne State University Press, examines the role of Jewish women in American literature over the past hundred years. From the publisher’s website:
By tracing a matrilineal literary history, this book dissents from readers and critics who continue to describe women’s contributions as mere commentaries on and correctives to male-dominated canons. Simultaneously, this volume troubles the politics of inheritance, continuity, and lineage to underscore the ways that literary traditions—like Jewishness and gender—are mutually constitutive and continually in flux.
Collectively, contributors reframe Jewish American literary history through feminist approaches that have revolutionized the field, from intersectionality and the #MeToo movement to queer theory and disability studies. Examining both canonical and lesser-known texts, this collection asks: what happens to conventional understandings of Jewish American literature when we center women’s writing and acknowledge women as dominant players in Jewish cultural production?
Dr. Oksman’s article, “Interconnected Losses: Grief Made Visible in Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” is one of several pieces in the volume.
On Monday, May 13, Dr. Oksman will moderate a roundtable discussion at the American Jewish Historical Society’s 2024 Biennial Scholar’s Conference at the Center for Jewish History, right here in New York City. The discussion is called “Putting Jewish Women’s Cultural Production on the Map,” and it will involve six writers and editors who created Matrilineal Dissent.
Congratulations, Dr. Oksman!
Published: May 10, 2024
Writing Professor Tahneer Oksman Publishes Graphic Novel Review in NPR
Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Language and Communication and Media Arts Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D., has published her third book review of 2024 on NPR!
