H-Net People

View Profile [124370]

	Nathan Abrams School of Creative Studies and Media At present, I am writing what is, as yet, the first detailed and critical study of the history and impact of the key intellectual periodical in America, Commentary magazine, under the title "The Rise and Fall of Commentary Magazine 1945-1995." My book focuses on the important issues that have occupied Americans over the post-war period, such as politics and radicalism; literature, culture, art, and movies; foreign affairs (including the German Question); civil rights and civil liberties. In addition, the study also traces the development over time of the particular concerns of the American Jewish community such as Jewishness and Judaism, Israel and Zionism and the Holocaust and antisemitism. As part of this study, I am examining in detail the lives and impact of its first two editors, Elliot Cohen and Norman Podhoretz, as they were two of the most influential figures in American intellectual life. In looking at the magazine, I hope to examine not just its content, but also the wider impact it has had on American life, particularly on intellectual, cultural and political affairs.

Web Page:	http://nathan.abrams.users.btopenworld.com/

List Affiliations:	Reviewer for H-Ideas Reviewer for H-Judaic

Reviews:	untitled Stormin' Norman Strikes Back Queer Jews

Interests:	American History / Studies Ethnic History / Studies Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Intellectual History Political History / Studies

Bio: PhD University of Birmingham (American Studies) MA University of Oxford MA University of Birmingham (American Studies) BA (Hons) University of Oxford (Modern History) BOOKS The Rise and Fall of Commentary Magazine 1945-1995 (in progress). Studying Film. Co-authored: Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell, Jan Udris. London: Arnold, 2001. Containing America: Cultural Production and Consumption in Fifties America. Co-edited: Nathan Abrams, Julie Hughes. Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2000. ARTICLES ‘Homegrown heroes’: Rap Music, Resistance, and Technology’ in Reading Pop Rhetorics, ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004). ‘“I'll have whatever she’s having”: Jewish Food on Film’ in Reel Food, ed. Anne Bowers in progress). ‘From Madness to Dysentery: Mad’s Other New York Intellectuals’, Journal of American Studies (forthcoming). ‘Review Essay: From the Gentleman’s Agreement to the Seinfeld Era’, Jewish Culture and History (forthcoming). ‘Review Essay: A World of Differences’, (submitted to 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies). ‘A Significant Journal of Jewish Opinion'?: The Jewishness of Commentary Magazine’, The American Jewish Archives Journal (forthcoming). ‘“A Profoundly Hegemonic Moment”: De-Mythologizing the Cold War New York Jewish Intellectuals’, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 21:3 (Spring 2003): 64-89. ‘“Are You Still You?”: ‘Memory, Identity, and Self-Positioning Total Recall’, Film and Philosophy VII (2003): 48-59. ‘Celebrating Freedom: American Judaism and the Cold War’ in New Voices in Jewish Thought: Vol. III, ed. Alex Gordon (London: New Voices Publications, 2000): 5-23. ‘Introduction’ (co-authored: Nathan Abrams and Julie Hughes) in Containing America: Cultural Production and Consumption in Fifties America, ed. Nathan Abrams and Julie Hughes (Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2000): 1-11. ‘Mother’s Old-Fashioned Gefilte Fish’ in Containing America: Cultural Production and Consumption in Fifties America, ed. Nathan Abrams and Julie Hughes (Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2000): 76-90. ‘“America is home”: Commentary Magazine and the Refocusing of the Community of Memory, 1945-1960’, Jewish Culture and History 3:1 (Summer 2000): 45-74. ‘“Taming Memory”: Theming America’s East Coast Holocaust Memorials’ (co- written with David Oettinger), 49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies 6 (Autumn 2000), http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/49thparallel. ‘Advertising Freedom: Commentary Magazine and the Cultural Cold War’, Studies in the Social Sciences 36 (May 1999): 65-80. ‘The New York Intellectuals and their City’, Overhere 17:1 (Summer 1997): 1-8. ‘Inhibited but not “crowded out”’: The Strange Fate of Soccer in the United States’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 12:3 (December 1995): 1-17. ‘Antonio’s B-Boys: Rap, Rappers, and Gramsci’s Intellectuals’, Popular Music & Society 19:4 (Winter 1995): 1-18. SEMINAR PAPERS/CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ‘Comparing Memories: Holocaust Memorialization in the UK and USA’. Institute of Historical Research Seminar in Contemporary British History, University of London, 16th January 2002. ‘Sex and Obscenity in COMMENTARY Magazine’. Institute of Historical Research Seminar in American and American Film History, University of London, 8th November 2001. ‘A Significant Journal of Jewish Opinion? Commentary Magazine’. The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio, 9th July 2001. ‘From Madness to Dysentery: Mad’s Other New York Intellectuals’. The Jewish Textualities Seminar, University of London, 12th March 2001. ‘“More than one million mothers know it’s the REAL thing”: Mothers, Old-Fashioned Gefilte Fish, and 1950s America’. The New Voices in Jewish Thought Seminar, London, 3rd November 1999. ‘“Are you still you?”: Memory, Identity, and Self-Positioning in Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall’. American Studies Research Seminar, The University of Birmingham, 20th January 1997. ‘“A New Style of O. G.”: Rap in the Postindustrial Urban Context’. American Studies Research Seminar, The University of Birmingham, April 1996. ‘A Significant Journal of Opinion: Commentary Magazine 1945-1995’. The British Association of American Studies Annual Conference, Oxford University, 8th April 2002. ‘Undoing the Cold War: Mad Magazine’. The British Association of American Studies Annual Conference, Keele University, 7th April 2001. ‘“Like a Stallion”: Arthur Miller as Sexually Orthodox Cold Warrior’. The British Association of American Studies Annual Conference, University of East Anglia, 18th April 1998. ‘Bodies of Resistance: A Problem in Radical Misunderstanding’. The Fourth Annual Humanities Conference, Bath College of Higher Education, 6th July 1997. ‘Our Truth Must Be Active: The Mobilization of “Freedom” During the Cultural Cold War’. The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Conference, Georgetown University, 22nd June 1997. ‘Our Truth Must Be Active: The New York Jewish Community’s Discourses of Freedom during the Cold War’. The British Association of American Studies Annual Conference, University of Birmingham, 5th April 1997. ‘“A carefully calibrated instrument of culture”: The Role of HUAC in Cold War Cultural Production’. The Midlands BAAS Postgraduate Conference, Nene College, 8th December 1995. TEACHING The New Deal to the New Frontier (Westminster University) The Making of Modern America (University of Greenwich) Civil War America (University of Greenwich) History of the USA since c.1890 (Royal Holloway, London)History of the USA 1877-1974 (University College, London) Film and Television History (Open University) The United States in the Twentieth Century (Open University) North American History since 1600 (Birkbeck College) The American Century (Birkbeck College) The American Mosaic (Birkbeck College) The Dream Factory: A History of Hollywood (Birkbeck College) Foundation Course (Birkbeck College) Cinema History – Introductory Studies (Middlesex University) Analysing Popular Music (University of North London) The American Jewish Dream (London School of Jewish Studies) History of the Mass Media and Popular Culture (London Guildhall University) Football, Media and Society (London Guildhall University) American History from Independence to the Present (University of Kent, Canterbury) American History since 1865 (Brunel University) United States in World Affairs (Brunel University) American Communities (Brunel University) European Fascism 1918-1945 (Brunel University) Foundations in American History since 1890 (Birmingham University) The African American Experience (Birmingham University) World History since 1914 (Birmingham University) British History since 1914 (Birmingham University) New Approaches to Modern History (Birmingham University)