Placing and Displacing Jewish Studies: Notes on the Future of a Field

Abstract

Let Me Begin with a Decidedly Non-Jewish Reference, in Order to Both Place and Displace Jewish Studies. In Italo Calvino'sInvisible Cities, an evocation of imaginary places that emerge and recede from memory, all eventually turning out to be the same place, Marco Polo says to Kubla Kahn, in response to the charge that he has not spoken of Venice: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice” (86). The notion of Venice as implicit in every city strikes me as an apt analogy for what I will be claiming as the possible relation between Jewish studies and literary studies. As a faculty member housed in a national literature department (German) at a public research university dominated by a biennial funding battle with the state legislature, I move between reading the minutes of the University Senate and reading Calvino'sInvisible Citiesin order to imagine the invisible universities or invisible studies beyond the prairie and, indeed, beyond the notion of the university (and the humanities) in ruin.