Pastoral Mode Research Articles

Cruel Optimism as an Ecology of Powers

How do the flexibilized scenes of cruel optimism crystallize and resonate with the situational displays of crises as a governmental oversight? Centering around this question, the paper aims to offer a critical fulcrum for problematic attachments toward future-mediated fantasies in the aftermath of the Kahramanmaras earthquakes. It starts with evaluating how the pastoral mode was applied as a cruel diagram of positivity by the Turkish government through the omnipresent prowess of the media, which presents an ‘ordinaryizing’ affect in regularizing the fatalistic discourses and relief efforts. It then continues to analyze the retributive discourses by the politicians and officials that triggered the oscillatory porosity among varied (de)subjectivities, toggling between sovereign misrecognitions and exclusions, as well as spiritually vivifying the optimistic barriers of cruelty. Lastly, it discusses in what ways the hopeful projections reconciled with the preemption by the dominant scientific narratives paradoxically prolong the preexistence of uncertainty and trust.

Art, Affect, and Enslavement: The Song of the Oxcart in Colonial Dutch Brazil

Focusing on a single artwork, Frans Post’s painting called The Oxen Cart of 1638, this article explores what Édouard Glissant calls the emotional apartheid of the plantation system. It argues that the affective evasion of Post’s painting fosters anti-Black racism by denying the full humanity of captive peoples. The painting is read together with Caspar Barlaeus’s contemporary apologia for the leadership of Maurits of Nassau, who was the governor-general of Dutch Brazil and Post’s patron. Focusing on classical and Neostoic understandings of governance and enslavement, the article turns to Paul Alpers’s analysis of the pastoral mode as an art of evasion that justifies the exploitation of rural labourers. It concludes by taking up Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation to consider the oppositional views and counter-narratives expressed in the music-making traditions of enslaved people.

The Transmission of the Pastoral Mode in Sarah Hall’s Haweswater (2002)

Literary scholars have argued that the return of the pastoral mode in contemporary literature is sparked by the environmental crisis (Lilley 29). Such a return is a testimony to the adaptability and reflexivity of this literary tradition. I argue that Sarah Hall transforms and reconfigures the pastoral mode so as to transfer it to the present and adapt it to contemporary environmental concerns. Haweswater presents the reader with a pastoral setting that is far from idyllic as the narrative depicts the flooding of a Lake District valley to enable the construction of a dam designed to provide the city of Manchester with water. Far from the escapism and idealisation pastoral has long been accused of (Sales 17), this novel offers a powerful and complex representation of how the pastoral tradition and contemporary concerns for the destruction of the environment intersect. Hall borrows some characteristics of Terry Gifford’s ‘post-pastoral’ (Gifford 3) to put into perspective the social, political and environmental consequences of exploiting nature and the non-human entities that inhabit it.

"Boyish as a Ganymede": Greek Love and the Erotic Experiment in Jude the Obscure

Abstract: This article demonstrates the importance of Jude the Obscure's Oxford setting to Thomas Hardy's project of writing a novel of maturation that refuses to conclude with successful reproduction. Linking the character of Sue Bridehead with Hardy's interest in writing about Greek love by Oxford graduates, I show how Jude's coupling with Sue incites intellectual exploration rather than the reducing development to the ends of reproductive marriage or professional achievement. To narrate the effect of Sue's tutelage, I show, Hardy derails the novel's teleological progression in favor of a pastoral mode made possible by spaces where the couple can safely practice non-marital sexuality. By way of conclusion, I position Jude at the start of a queer pastoral tradition in British fiction in which setting is formally significant because of its historical significance to the sustainability of sexually nonnormative lives.

“The Famous Republic of Shepherds” (Hall 2015: 382–383): Sarah Hall’s Alternative Pastoral Trajectory in Haweswater (2002) and The Wolf Border (2015)

Abstract In most of her writings, Sarah Hall uses the pastoral mode, tapping its complexity in order not only to revisit and subvert its conventions but also to represent and question the interactions between the human and the non-human. The pastoral is thus used as an aesthetic and ethical medium through which the crises of the Anthropocene are made visible. I argue that Sarah Hall’s Haweswater and The Wolf Border, drawing on the origins of pastoral, showcase an alternative pastoral trajectory that allows her to represent the challenges of the current environmental crisis. Through a thematic and formal study of Hall’s novels in the light of new materialist theories, I intend to show that the reinvention of the pastoral mode is a way for Hall to shed light on the realistic content of the pastoral that tends to go unnoticed: the actual working and living conditions of land workers, the political orientations behind rewilding programs, the representation of the environment and the ontological hierarchy that enables human subjects to reify nature and its non-human inhabitants. This alternative pastoral trajectory allows literature to investigate, question and reflect on the current environmental crisis and on our position as human beings embedded in a natural environment.

Is camel's urine friend or enemy? Review of its role in human health or diseases.

Camels play an important role in the pastoral mode of life by fulfilling basic demands of livelihood. Various pathologies, such as tuberculosis, hemorrhoids, ascites, increased size of the abdomen, gas colic, anemia, and abdominal tumors, were treated with animal urine, including camels, horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, elephants, and buffalo. Thirty different compounds were analyzed in camel urine by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. For inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis, 28 important elements were analyzed in the urine of both camel and bovine. It was found that the inorganic elements are almost similar, except sodium, potassium, iron, zinc, and magnesium are higher in levels in camel urine, while chromium is high in bovine urine. Camel urine also contains different nanoparticles, crystals, and nano-rods with varying shapes and sizes, which offer potent selective cytotoxic activity against several lines of cancer cells. It is believed that the camel's urine has a therapeutic effect for a wide range of diseases such as chill, fever, or even tumors; therefore, it has been consumed in the Arabian Peninsula for a long time. Usually, patients take it directly or by mixing a few drops with camel milk. Camel urine is also used for therapeutic purposes, most widely in Asia, Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. The religious aspect of using camel urine in treatment comes from the fact that there has been convincing evidence that the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) suggested the use of camel urine to treat his companions who were suffering from abdominal pains at that time. The camel's urine has anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. It also has hepato-protective and cardiovascular effects.

Ford Madox Ford’s “Cold Pastoral”: The Last Post

The essay discusses the last volume of Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy Parade’s End (1924-28). As Andrew Hampson and Robert Purssell highlight, whether The Last Post is an integral part of the tetralogy has been heavily debated since Graham Greene decided to publish the 1963 edition of the ‘Tietjens Saga’ as a trilogy. As they go on to explain, a major charge against the volume is “tying up too neatly various loose ends” (2013). Indeed, The Last Post seems to call for an interpretation in the pastoral tradition, which suggests that Ford’s novel—especially in comparison with Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier (1918)—ends in an idyll even if it is not free from certain ironies inherent in pastoral literature, as Seamus O’Malley (2007) maintains. In my view, on closer scrutiny, these ironies fundamentally undermine the “too neat” ending of the tetralogy. Haunted by the aftereffects of war and the ghosts of Mark’s, Christopher’s and Valentine’s former selves, dissolving identities not only by decentering but also by doubling, this apparent idyll far too often offers glimpses of its own Gothic alter ego, a narrative of madness, imprisonment and disintegration. Yet, as consistent readings of the novel in the pastoral mode imply, the Gothic double never fully takes over but, in my interpretation, subverts the superficial idyll of The Last Post, and with that, fully optimistic interpretations of the entire tetralogy.

CHANGE IN POETICS OF BRITISH “TRENCH POETRY” (WITH REFERENCE TO FLORAL IMAGERY IN POEMS BY R. BROOKE, E. THOMAS, W. OWEN, I. ROSENBERG, I. GURNEY)

The author of the article examines floral imagery in the poems by British “trench poets” R. Brooke, E. Thomas, W. Owen, I. Rosenberg, and I. Gurney. Having enlisted to fight on the Western Front, these poets witnessed the difference of the Great War from the conflicts of the previous epochs, and expressed this change in their works. While their early verse is either heroic or pastoral, in later poems the romanticizing of war experience gives way to disappointment. The use of floral imagery in wartime poetry unveils the contrast between the early and late war poetics. Floral imagery traditionally bears some cultural connotations: for many “trench poets” of 1914-1915, steeped in the Romantic traditions, flowers and gardens symbolized Englishness and their native soil where soldiers hope to return. In later years, however, floral imagery is reinterpreted, and the trenches of World War I are shown as completely opposed to the pastoral mode of the previous poetics.

The Green Depression: American Ecoliterature in the 1930s and 1940s by Matthew M. Lambert

<i>The Green Depression: American Ecoliterature in the 1930s and 1940s</i> by Matthew M. Lambert

Public Practical Theology and Public Pastoral Care Intersection with Christian Ethics within the Context of Ubuntu and Hospitality to Migrants

This article explores the current state of public practical theology in South Africa in shaping public policy and its responses to issues affecting communities, with particular emphasis on xenophobia. The proponents of public practical theology while having the same or similar approaches on how it should be practised, seemingly differ on the pastoral mode of advocacy. The differences in perspectives vary from being occupied with the more abstract paradigmatic, epistemological and methodological concerns by the scholars in this field. This obviates the fundamental practical theological dimension of the task of public practical theology, which should prioritise a concern with the agency role of the church and other religious communities – albeit not in isolation from other role players − in shaping public policy. In doing so, this article firstly, will explore the interconnection between public practical theology and Christian ethics. Secondly, practical theology as a conceptual and functional understanding within the context of xenophobia with a shift in emphasis to public practical theology.

Georgic Marvel: Agriculture and Affect

How do humans respond, emotionally and psychologically, to georgic spaces and places? What do we think and feel when we encounter “working landscapes”—those rural places (primarily farms, but also mines and working forests) where labor produces goods that meet our material and metabolic needs? Despite increasing attention to the georgic literary tradition, these questions remain unsettled. In fact, much of the growing body of georgic scholarship disagrees about the kinds of responses generated by georgic landscapes. One task that remains, then, is to map the current scholarly terrain and synthesize, if possible, a theory of georgic affect. A related, equally important task is to ground such a theory as much as possible in the realities of soil and sun and water. Without attention to such fundamentals, the georgic mode will likely remain solely the property of academics or, equally unfortunate, become as steeped in myth and therefore as untethered from the material world as the pastoral mode. Thus, in “Georgic Marvel” I derive from scholarship and experience a nuanced but intelligible concept describing the human response to georgic places. In short, my intention is to begin to do for working landscapes what the concept of the sublime has done for wilderness. I argue that the experience of georgic places generates marvel and humility. At least two different kinds of catalysts initiate this reaction: encounters with either an epic past or with some kind of biotic mystery trigger marvel—a kind of negative hubris that tears down anthropocentrism by reminding us of the past and of other actors and agents. In its challenge to our self-centeredness, georgic marvel approximates the sublime, but relates to a different land use category and represents a distinct response. Whereas terror is integral to the experience of the sublime, georgic marvel creates intrigue and curiosity rather than fear. Marvel leads us deeper. The article concludes with an exploration of the ways in which a theory of georgic affect rooted in marvel would productively reorient our understanding of the human place in the world.

The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism

The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism

Market Economy and Pastoral Mode of Consumption: The Case of the Samburu Household Economy in North Central Kenya in the Mid-1990s

Market Economy and Pastoral Mode of Consumption: The Case of the Samburu Household Economy in North Central Kenya in the Mid-1990s

Review on Health Benefits of Camel Urine: Therapeutics Effects and Potential Impact on Public Health Around East Hararghe District

Camel is one of the important livestock species which plays a major role in the pastoral mode of life by fulfilling basic demands of livelihood. Traditionally, camel urine has been used in the treatment of human diseases. With regard to the health benefits of drinking the urine of camels, it has been proven by modern scientific researches. Camel urine has an unusual and unique biochemical composition that contributes to medicinal values. The chemical composition of camel urine showed the presence of purine bases, hypoxanthine, sodium, potassium, creatinine, urea, uric acid, and phosphates. The nano-particles in the camel’s urine can be used to fight cancer. Camel urine has antimicrobial activity against pathogenic bacteria. Its chemical and organic constituents have also inhibitory properties against fungal growth, human platelets, and parasitic diseases mainly fasciollosis in calves. The healthy status of the liver can be restored through ingestion of diet and minerals in camel urine. Camel urine is used by the camel owners and Bedouins as medicine in different ways. The Bedouin in the Arab desert used to mix camel urine with milk. Recently; the WHO has warned against drinking camel urine due to the modern attempt to limit Outbreaks of Respiratory Syndrome (MRS) in the Middle East. There is no scientific dosage for camel urine to be applied as medicine for different diseases and the ways of camel urine formulation and utilization for the care of patients varies from country to country. Therefore, the purposes of the present review describe the biochemical composition of camel urine will be scientifically extracted and formulated as a therapy rather than drinking raw urine and people’s health impact.

Review on Health Benefits of Camel Urine: Therapeutics Effects and Potential Impact on Public Health Around East Hararghe District

Camel is one of the important livestock species which plays a major role in the pastoral mode of life by fulfilling basic demands of livelihood. Traditionally, camel urine has been used in the treatment of human diseases. With regard to the health benefits of drinking the urine of camels, it has been proven by modern scientific researches. Camel urine has an unusual and unique biochemical composition that contributes to medicinal values. The chemical composition of camel urine showed the presence of purine bases, hypoxanthine, sodium, potassium, creatinine, urea, uric acid, and phosphates. The nano-particles in the camel’s urine can be used to fight cancer. Camel urine has antimicrobial activity against pathogenic bacteria. Its chemical and organic constituents have also inhibitory properties against fungal growth, human platelets, and parasitic diseases mainly fasciollosis in calves. The healthy status of the liver can be restored through ingestion of diet and minerals in camel urine. Camel urine is used by the camel owners and Bedouins as medicine in different ways. The Bedouin in the Arab desert used to mix camel urine with milk. Recently; the WHO has warned against drinking camel urine due to the modern attempt to limit Outbreaks of Respiratory Syndrome (MRS) in the Middle East. There is no scientific dosage for camel urine to be applied as medicine for different diseases and the ways of camel urine formulation and utilization for the care of patients varies from country to country. Therefore, the purposes of the present review describe the biochemical composition of camel urine will be scientifically extracted and formulated as a therapy rather than drinking raw urine and people’s health impact.

Comparison of organic carbon stock of Regosols under two different climates and land use in Tunisia

Drylands are affected by desertification and by a serious process of degradation. Studying the properties of their soils and their carbon sequestration characteristics is a key step as a major contribution for their conservation to cope with the global warming issue. Considering the geographical position of Tunisia, most of its territory is in the dryland zone with a deficit in water balance, and half of its area is only occupied by Lithosols and Regosols. These soils and despite their existence in dry climates are either pastureland or agricultural land, they play a considerable role for the peasants; however, their organic carbon stocks remain little studied and not well known. The present work focuses on the state of the carbon stock in the Regosols of Tunisia. Two study sites were studied; the first was a Regosol in Gafsa under arid climate, the second, another Regosol in Kairouan under semiarid climate. In these two sites, we also have two different modes of land use. In fact, in each site, we have a plot in an olive grove adjacent to another in a pastoral mode. Results showed that soil particle size, pH, and bulk density were very close. The difference was observed in the content of organic carbon and therefore in organic carbon stock. In olive groves, the organic carbon stocks of the soil, 1-m deep, were 8.22 (± 0.72) Kg·C·m-2 in Gafsa and 12 (± 0.46) Kg·C·m-2 in Kairouan. This increase mainly concerned the surface layers (0–20 cm) and the deepest layers (80–100 cm). By comparing the carbon stocks of soils under olive groves with those under pasture, the gain in 15 years varied between 1.48 and 2.46 Kg·C·m-2. These results prove the low organic matter content of Regosols from North Africa, but on the other hand, their great capacity to sequester organic carbon. These same soils, if organically amended, could be fertile and productive soils, but also, could act as a carbon sink to cope with global warming.

“Mild health I seek thee”: Clare and Bloomfield at the Limits of Pastoral

ABSTRACT In The Country and the City (1973), Raymond Williams dismantled the “pastoral assumption” that the rural laboring class were pictures of health and vitality, uncovering instead the reality of embodied suffering in laboring-class poetry. This essay considers how Robert Bloomfield and John Clare interrogated this “pastoral assumption” of rural health, suggesting that to claim they merely rejected it risks losing sight of their subtle forms of poetic critique. The body, mind, and verse of laboring-class poets were subject to simultaneous cultural narratives of robust health and sickly weakness, within which Bloomfield and Clare had to forge their own distinctive poetic voices. They wrote poems, I argue, that ostensibly upheld a pastoral ideal of health emanating from the natural world, but also critiqued this ideal through an artful hesitancy, especially in their use of apostrophe. I consider the influence of Bloomfield’s “To My Old Oak Table” (1806), and “Shooter’s Hill” (1806) on Clare’s early poem “To Health” (1821) and one of his middle-period sonnets in particular. Far from being uncomfortable or under-confident in the pastoral mode, Bloomfield and Clare brought their own aesthetic experiments and experiences of precarious health to bear on some of its key tropes.

Pope John XXIII, Conciliar and Contemporary Episcopal Pastoral Governance

AbstractThis article will discuss the emergence of an increasingly cogent argument made by Pope John XXIII for a redefined role of episcopal pastoral governance in the (ante) preparatory phase of the Second Vatican Council and during early conciliar debate. Pope John will be presented as encouraging a renewed role for bishops in his public orations preceding the Council. This continued in his support of the conciliar process and encouragement given to senior bishops at critical moments during its first session. As contemporary understandings of episcopal governance were questioned before and at the Council, increasing numbers of bishops saw the possibilities of revitalising their governance role in a pastoral mode. Its contemporary relevance lies in Pope Francis’ call to build a synodal church in which episcopal governance is exercised at the local and universal levels. Today, this requires individual bishops ‘to assume their responsibilities to govern their own diocese, always in consultation with the faithful.’1

The Potency of Pastoral in the Hispanic Baroque by Anne Holloway

Reviewed by: The Potency of Pastoral in the Hispanic Baroque by Anne Holloway Felipe Valencia Anne Holloway. The Potency of Pastoral in the Hispanic Baroque. TAMESIS, 2017. 240 PP. IN HER MONOGRAPH on seventeenth-century Hispanic pastoral poetry, Anne Holloway sets out to illuminate the possibilities that the pastoral mode opened up in a wide array of poetic texts. She proposes that throughout the seventeenth century, on both sides of the Hispanic Atlantic, pastoral “emerges as a productive site for poetic experimentation” (201). The book consists of five chapters and a very brief afterword. Each chapter begins with an overview of relevant scholarship on the author studied or on the appropriate theoretical frame. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the book as a whole, stating its scope and aims and providing an overview of each of the chapters. Holloway also identifies the main constants of the early modern interpretation of ancient bucolic models and sets forth three foundational claims for the subsequent chapters. First, she contends that the Renaissance inherited from ancient commentaries on the Bucolics, or Eclogues, by Virgil the “general recognition … of the potential of the pastoral mode for the expression of political concerns” (17). The other two claims have to do with the most famous poems by Luis de Góngora: the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (1612) and the Soledades (1613–17), both of which are set in pastoral sites and are epics: the former an epyllion and the latter what Mercedes Blanco has termed an “epopeya de la paz” (Góngora heroico. Las Soledades y la tradición épica, Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 2012). Holloway argues that these two poems motivated a wholesale “re-conception of the pastoral” (184) in the Hispanic world, liberating an “epic energy subsumed” in the mode (29), which in fact first arose as a subspecies of the epic (12–13). The other claim is that the cyclopean voice—a recognizable subgenre since the Idylls by the Greek poet Theocritus (ca. 300–260 BCE)—forms the core of Spanish baroque pastoral. Idyll 11 had introduced the cyclops Polyphemus to the pastoral bower: although in Theocritus’s hands he continues to be the object of mockery, as he was in Homer’s Odyssey, he is no longer a fearsome adversary but rather a pathetic and unrequited lover who sings a tender song to woo absent Galatea. After it was taken up by Virgil in Eclogue 2, the cyclopean song presented a [End Page 157] number of stock features, most notably the contemplation and defense of the self as one who is not too unsightly to be loved. Ovid further transformed the myth in book 13 of his Metamorphoses when he fused the Homeric monster and the Theocritean pastoral lover into one and the same: he who entreats Galatea when she favors the strapping Acis instead, and then, upon seeing the lovers in the act, resorts to murderous violence against his rival. Holloway maintains that Góngora’s Polifemo, a retelling of the Ovidian version, plays an “axiomatic role … in Baroque rewritings and critical re-evaluations of pastoral poetry” (6). Chapters 2 and 5 track the impact of Góngora’s cyclopean song, and chapter 4 also makes frequent reference to Góngora’s pastoral legacy. Holloway’s book thus expects its readers to know the Soledades and particularly the Polifemo well. A more systematic overview of them in the first chapter is missing, as well as a brief discussion of gender to seed the extensive treatment of the subject in chapters 2 and 3. The exploration begins in earnest with chapter 2, which centers on the pastoral verse by Pedro Soto de Rojas (1584–1658). Holloway shows how the poet from Granada, long in the shadow of Góngora and neglected by scholars, grapples with the legacy of Petrarch and of Góngora’s Polifemo in the eclogues and pastoral-themed sonnets contained in Desengaño de amor en rimas (1623), his Petrarchan lyrical sequence, as well as in the recently attributed Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa (6). Holloway directs our attention in those texts to the “increased prominence for female voices in the imitative fables that...

A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History by Michael Hoberman

Reviewed by: A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History by Michael Hoberman Benjamin Schreier (bio) A Hundred Acres of America: The Geography of Jewish American Literary History By Michael Hoberman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. xii + 183 pp. In one sense Michael Hoberman's short, smart, and pithy new book addresses a fairly straightforward topic: "The subject of this book is the historical relationship between the Jewish American literary imagination and the sense of place" (2). Accordingly, it sets itself a fairly straightforward task: namely, as he writes toward the book's close, "The essays in the book represent my best attempt to explore the role that the geography of North America has played in shaping the Jewish American literary imagination" (155), or, as he describes that attempt toward the book's opening, to explore "the ways in which Jewish subjects have engaged the long-standing American tendency to contemplate and experience geography as a crucible for the formation of cultural identity" (2). And yet, as we see in this last formulation, there's something more at work in Hoberman's work: critical energies more profound than merely parochially straightforward. The book's great strength—and its offering to the field—is to provide a way to de-exceptionalize Jewish American literary study; for once we recognize the role of geography in Jewish American writing, once we appreciate its "territoriality," we recognize that it shares its ground with other American writing and literatures. To understand "geography as a basis for literary and cultural continuity" is to understand Jews in America as neither "oppressed outsiders" nor "excessively complacent recipients of American privilege" (4), but rather as Americans actively engaged in experiencing and writing like other Americans. [End Page 299] This represents a critically significant—and salutary—departure from the way the field has heretofore conceptualized itself (though "taken itself for granted" is probably more accurate, at least if you ask me). One of the historicist side effects of multiculturalist pluralism in the humanities is that it's frequently easy to think of ethnicity- or identity-based literatures as more or less discrete entities—with African American literature indexed to something more or less knowable as African American experience, Queer literature indexed to something more or less knowable as Queer experience, and so forth—and it's easy as well to eschew theorizing how those various siloed experiences and symptomatic literary formations interact with, overlap, or interdetermine each other (other than, maybe, some gestures toward a minoritarian idea of oppression). In Jewish American literary study this thought-formation is often intimately bound up with, and indeed inextricable from, a foundational sense that immigration is the only real theory the field needs—that is, that Jewish American literature essentially tracks the chronologically progressive history of Jewish immigration to the United States (thus do scholars preoccupy themselves with talk of literary generations, for example, or with how temporal distance from the scene of immigration determines the contours of the literary imagination of identity). But with its focus on geography rather than immigration, A Hundred Acres of America explicitly challenges this often-unacknowledged immigration theory of Jewish American literature. As Hoberman succinctly claims in the Introduction, "This book argues that a rich and complex relationship with American geography itself, and not merely the immigrant experience, constitutes a central reference point and touchstone for the development, over the course of several centuries, of a Jewish literary consciousness in the United States" (4). In chapters on frontier writing by Jews in early America, on late nineteenth-century and turn-of-the-twentieth-century intellectuals who emphasized the Jewish presence in colonial American cities (and who therefore substantiated claims both to the "cosmopolitan and pluralistic origins of America's oldest cities" [46] and "Jewish participation in early American history" [53]), on early- to mid-twentieth-century middlebrow and middle-American Jewish writers (in which writers [End Page 300] like Edna Ferber challenge our preconceived romantic notions of regionalism by representing small towns as continuous with "other American environments" [78]), on late-twentieth-century Jewish writers' contestations of the pastoral mode, on turn-of-the-twenty-firstcentury literary returns to the shtetl...