Embodied Differences

Henrietta Mondry is Professor in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies at the University of Canterbury. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and has published widely on cultural history and literature. Her books include Populist Writers and the Jews and Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture.

“Mondry’s book is exemplary in its linking between being human and/or being Jewish or non-Jewish, as the case may be. What is sad about her tale is that while we, as academics, know how poisonous are both the charges of difference as well the complex reactions to being so labeled, we seem to be caught in a loop that makes it ever more difficult to acknowledge the infiltration of a fragmented past into our pre- sent world. We often struggle to get our case across in spite of this. Mondry succeeds brilliantly.”— Sander L. Gilman, Contemporary Jewry“It is noteworthy and commendable that the book, which started with the outsiders’ often pernicious take on the Jew’s body and the “paradoxical space” (212) it occupies in Russian literature, ends with the celebration of Jewish agency. This is one of the many reasons why no student of Russian and Jewish literature and culture should bypass this innovative and provocative book.”— Marat Grinberg, Antisemitism Studies“This book rewards the reader as a result of the breadth of discussion of a specific domain, and the number of vectors that Mondry succeeds in applying in her research. This is complemented by the depth of discussion, represented by a layered approach that employs tools from literary theory, psychoanalysis, museum studies, pathology, and sociology, to name a few of the disciplines brought to bear on the topic at hand. It is an extremely erudite study that, nonetheless, engages the reader by its approach, making it an ideal acquisition for any academic library.”— John Cook, University of Melbourne, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies

• Table of ContentsA note on transliteration List of illustrationsIntroductionPart One: The Other Body and Spaces for Matter Chapter One. Locating historically the Jew’s body between display and transformationChapter Two. The power of meat: defining ethnicity and masculinity in Gogol Chapter Three. Valued bodies and spaces: cross-religious encounters in Dostoevsky Chapter Four. Intimate spaces: the modern Jewess in the boudoir in Chekhov and BelyChapter Five. Animal advocacy and ritual murder trials Chapter Six. Aphids and other undesirables: the predatory Jew versus Soviet artChapter Seven. Abject bodies: tactility, dissection, and body rites in postmodernist fiction Part Two: Re/active Embodiments and a Sense of Things Chapter Eight. Women writers inventing exotic origins Chapter Nine. Strange ancestors in the house and in the basementChapter Ten. On feeding the family: constructing Jewishness through nurture  Chapter Eleven. Materiality of smell and constructs of embodied memoryChapter Twelve. “An edible chronotope”: in search of Jewish heritage food Conclusion: The Power of Bodies and Senses that MatterBibliographyIndex