• 제목/요약/키워드: Jewish American Identity

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"A Very Sudden Thing": Recapturing Cold War History in Philip Roth's American Pastoral

  • Lew, Seunggu
    • 영미문화
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    • 제10권2호
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    • pp.49-72
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    • 2010
  • As the first of Philip Roth's recent series of novels that delve into American Cold War history deeply entwined with the post-war Jewish American experience, American Pastoral traces the tragic fall of a third-generation Jewish American named Seymour "Swede" Levov, whose dream of complete assimilation to the post-ethnic American paradise is irrecoverably disrupted when his young daughter blows up the local post office to protest against the Vietnam War. This essay proposes to examine Swede Levov's interrupted pursuit of the American dream by locating it within specific Cold War contexts and national imaginaries propagated particularly during the years from John F. Kennedy to Lyndon B. Johnson. In so doing, I will argue that Roth presents a paradoxical vision of Jewish American identity that could be acquired by performing perpetual self-effacement and submergence into the non-place of anonymity and doubleness, a mythic location of the post-ethnic Cold War American family. Levov's life becomes true part of the mythic narrative of American history when he realizes that his life, just like the nation's history, is a series of temporalities radically discontinued without any manageable detour ot divine bypass to cross over. Rather than indicating Roth's retraction from the postmodern understanding of subjectivity, the novel's historical realism, I will argue, serves to illuminate the postmodern conditions of American Cold War history and ethnic identity.

A New Challenge to Korean American Religious Identity: Cultural Crisis in Korean American Christianity

  • Ro, Young-Chan
    • 대순사상논총
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    • 제18권
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    • pp.53-79
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    • 2004
  • This paper explores the relationship between Korean immigrants to the United States and their religious identity from the cultural point of view. Most scholarly studies on Korean immigrants in the United States have been dominated by sociological approach and ethnic studies in examining the social dimension of the Korean immigrant communities while neglecting issues concerning their religious identity and cultural heritage. Most Korean immigrants to America attend Korean churches regardless their religious affiliation before they came to America. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the fact that Korean church has provided a necessary social service for the newly arrived immigrants. Korean churches have been able to play a key role in the life of Korean immigrants. Korean immigrants, however, have shown a unique aspect regarding their religious identity compared to other immigrants communities in the United States. America is a nation of immigrants, coming from different parts of the world. Each immigrant community has brought their unique cultural heritage and religious persuasion. Asian immigrants, for example, brought their own traditional religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism. People from the Middle Eastern countries brought Islamic faith while European Jews brought the Jewish tradition. In these immigrant communities, religious identity and cultural heritage were homo genously harmonized. Jewish people built synagogue and taught Hebrew, Jewish history, culture, and faith. In this case, synagogue was not only the house of worship for Jews but also the center for learning Jewish history, culture, faith, and language. In short, Jewish cultural history was intimately related to Jewish religious history; for Jewish immigrants, learning their social and political history was indeed identical with leaning of their religious history. The same can be said about the relationship between Indian community and Hinduism. Hindu temples serve as the center of Indian immigrantsin providing the social, cultural, and spiritual functions. Buddhist temples, for that matter, serve the same function to the people from the Asian countries. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tibetans, and Thais have brought their respective Buddhist traditions to America and practice and maintain both their religious faith and cultural heritage. Middle Eastern people, for example, have brought Islamic faith to the United States, and Mosques have become the center for learning their language, practicing their faith, and maintaining their cultural heritage. Korean immigrants, unlike any other immigrant group, have brought Christianity, which is not a Korean traditional religion but a Western religion they received in 18th and 19th centuries from the West and America, back to the United States, and church has become the center of their lives in America. In this context, Koreans and Korean-Americans have a unique situation in which they practice Christianity as their religion but try to maintain their non-Christian cultural heritage. For the Korean immigrants, their religious identity and cultural identity are not the same. Although Korean church so far has provides the social and religious functions to fill the need of Korean immigrants, but it may not be able to become the most effective institution to provide and maintain Korean cultural heritage. In this respect, Korean churches must be able to open to traditional Korean religions or the religions of Korean origin to cultivate and nurture Korean cultural heritage.

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'홀로코스트' 서사의 한계와 스미스의 『거울 속에 반영된 분노』에 제시된 치유 서사의 가능성 (The Limitations of Holocaust Narratives and the Possibility of Healing Narratives Suggested by Smith's Fires in the Mirror)

  • 정순국
    • 비교문화연구
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    • 제43권
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    • pp.377-404
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    • 2016
  • 본 논문에서 필자는 1993년 출판된 애나 디비어 스미스의 "거울 속에 반영된 분노"에서 기술된 인종간의 긴장과 갈등을 분석하려고 한다. 이 책은 1991년 뉴욕에서 발생했던 유대인과 흑인간의 충돌을 주요한 소재로 다루고 있는데, 이 사건은 이미 일인극의 형식과 텔레비전 연극시리즈로 방영된 적이 있다. 필자는 스미스의 인터뷰에 응한 많은 인물들이 여전히 홀로코스트와 노예제도의 담론이 지니고 있는 논리를 반복하고 있다는 점에 주목한다. 뉴욕의 크라운 하이츠에서 흑인 공동체와 유대인 공동체는 끔찍한 상실감을 공유하고 있지만 서로의 고통을 이해하려고 하기보다는 자신이 속한 문화, 인종의 집단정체성을 고집한다. 그들의 서사는 자신이 속한 집단이 과거에 경험한 역사적 사건에 수사학적으로 매여 있는 것이다. 필자는 스미스가 "거울 속에 반영된 분노"에서 자기 모순적인 독백들을 병치시킴으로써 노예제도와 홀로코스트 같은 담론들이 여전히 인종적, 민족적 공동체를 지배하고 있다는 사실을 제시한다고 생각한다. 필자의 의도는 유대인 공동체와 흑인 공동체간의 갈등만을 전적으로 조사하는데 있지 않다. 대신, 필자는 유대인 홀로코스트와 흑인 노예경험을 포함한 '홀로코스트 수사학'이 내포하고 있는 비평적, 이론적 담론들의 문제점을 분석하고 그 한계를 극복하려고 한다. 이러한 이해는 '홀로코스트 수사학'이 실패하는 지점을 드러내며 그것이 감추고 있는 폭력성을 제시할 뿐만 아니라 홀로코스트와 노예제도의 경험을 올바로 파악하기 위해서 그들과의 관계를 새롭게 형성하는 것이다. "거울 속에 반영된 분노"는 독자에게 자신의 맹목을 너무 쉽게 노출하는 '홀로코스트' 담론의 자기 모순적인 방식을 거울처럼 비춘다. 독자는 이와 같은 서사의 틈 속에서 과거의 상처가 치유되고 새로운 서사가 창출될 수 있는 가능성을 목격하게 된다.

미국 극에 나타난 에이즈 정치학 (AIDS Politics in American Drama)

  • 백승진
    • 영어영문학
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    • 제55권2호
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    • pp.259-292
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    • 2009
  • When AIDS evolved into a narrative, there were lots of mythologies on AIDS. Among them, the one that AIDS is a gay plague was accepted without any special rejection. Now AIDS is no longer a gay-related disease. At the beginning of the epidemic, however, AIDS was said to be a gay plague and gays were blamed for their life styles. Although AIDS was new, it had been in the mind of people. That is, the truths about AIDS were distorted and misunderstood. The social aspects of AIDS were based not on real scientific facts but on the prejudice and the practices which heterosexual society had invented for homosexuals. Here the AIDS crisis is said to be politicized. The socio-political responses to AIDS were effected by the dominance of Reaganism. So this paper investigates the effects of AIDS on the gay community and the reactions of the Reagan administration through analyzing ten American AIDS plays. Four issues are discussed to develop the paper's main idea: the meaning of AIDS, the past to be remembered, the new family system, and the indifference of President Reagan and the silence of media. AIDS means death; the relation between homosexuality and AIDS cannot be separated. Under these social circumstances AIDS becomes a symbol for moral corruption and the person with AIDS is thought to be punished. But a gay person can overcome the fear of death through regaining promiscuous sex and confirming his identity as a gay. Also to survive in the heterosexual society a gay has to make a new family system. Finally the indifference of the Reagan administration and the virtual silence of the media make the crisis more serious. In the conclusion homosexuals are compared to the Jewish people and the responsibility of gay community is also discussed. The important thing is that facing the AIDS crisis, the gay community has spiritually grown up.