Poetry

Wild Kingdom explores the world of academia, examining this strange landscape populated by faculty, administrators, and students. Using what she calls “received academic forms,” Jehanne Dubrow crafts poems that recall the language of academic documents such as syllabi, grading rubrics, and departmental minutes. “Honor Board Hearing,” a series of prose poems, depicts challenges frequently faced by undergraduates, offering fictionalized accounts of cases involving plagiarism, theft, sexual assault, and substance abuse.As a rejoinder to the famous dictum that “academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low,” Dubrow maintains that, given the current moment, the stakes could not be higher. Even as it acknowledges the cruelty that exists within the academy, Wild Kingdom asks how scholars and educators can work to ensure that institutions of higher learning continue to nurture students and remain places of rigorous critical thinking.

This collection of books featuring Jewish main characters is decidedly non-comprehensive. As we come across books that are described as having Jewish main characters, we add them to this database. The creators of the Jewish Genre Reading Challenge have not read all (or even most) of the books in this database. We have gathered information from many sources and not all may be accurate. Inclusion of a book in our database does not imply endorsement or approval. There is always the possibility that antisemitism may be present in a book, either written into a character's experience or through malicious or ignorant caricature or stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters and culture. Please take care of yourselves as you read.

 

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