This course will track the migration of Jewish American literature and culture from the work of pre-World War II immigrants to the American-born writers (comedians, songsters and movie makers) whose curious obsessions would do so much to define American popular and literary culture in the post-War period. Fiction from the 1890s down to the first decade of the 21st century—Abe Cahan to Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Michael Chabon and Art Spiegelman—films from The Jazz Singer (1927) to the Coen Brothers’ Serious Man (2010), music from Benny Goodman and Bob Dylan and a glance at Hank Greenberg who in 1938 almost matched Babe Ruth’s best season at the plate. Lecture, discussion, short essays.