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This book explores the possibility of applying perspectives developed in the context of Gender and Postcolonial Studies to Jewish Cultural Studies and Studies in Antisemitism. Starting with two introductory texts on the ‚Oriental Web‘ and the longue durée of the figure of the Jew as embodiment of the ‚other‘ in colonial discourse, the essays analyse the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal other intertwine in modern national discourse. The texts also examine the ways in which these borders are demarcated and transgressed by means of Orientalist self-fashioning in Jewish cultural production. The idea of Self-Orientalisation poses a challenge to the Saidian theory, in which Orientalism is conceived of as a „strange secret sharer of Western Antisemitism“.

The general theme is approached in an interdisciplinary manner and the book is divided into several chapters that cover, amongst others topics, the interaction of colonialism, Zionism and Orientalism, the Jew as a literary Oriental trope, and the entanglement of Orientalising identities with gender and queer identities. The collection is primarily concerned with the intricate genealogies of contemporary discourses.

Ulrike Brunotte / Jürgen Mohn / Christina Späti: Preliminary Remarks / Steven E. Aschheim: The Modern Jewish Experience and the Entangled Web of Orientalism / Ulrike Brunotte: “The Jewes did Indianize; or the Indians doe Judaize”: Philo-Semitism and antiJudaism as Topoi of Colonial Discourse. A Case Study / Hilegard Frübis: The Figure of the Beautiful Jewess: Displacements on the Borders between East and West / Mirjam Rajner: A Turbaned German of Mosaic Faith: Moritz Daniel Oppenheim’s Visual Self-Orientalization / Cecilie Speggers Schrøder Simonsen: Colonialism in the Ghetto: Reading Aus dem Ghetto as Self-Colonizing Literature / Christine Achinger: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Colonialism in Freytag’s Images of Jews and Poles / Axel Stähler: The Author’s derrière and the Ludic Impulse: Oskar Panizza’s “The Operated Jew” (1893) and Amy Levy’s “Cohen of Trinity” (1889) / Ofri Ilany: Homo-Semitism: Jewish Men, Greek Love and the Rise of Homosexual Identity / Gabriele Dietze: Affective Masculinity: Queering Jewish Orientalism in Young Vienna / Karin Stögner: Nature and Anti-Nature: Constellations of Antisemitism and Sexism / Christina Späti: Between Exoticism and Antisemitism: Orientalization of Jews in Switzerland in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries / Dekel Peretz: Franz Oppenheimer: A Pioneer of Diasporic Zionism / Jihan Jasmin S. Dean: De-Orientalization of Jews after 1989 in Germany: The Relationship between Discourse and Subjects

Originating in the collaboration of the international Research Network “Gender in Antisemitism, Orientalism and Occidentalism” (RENGOO), this collection of essays proposes to intervene in current debates about historical constructions of Jewish identity in relation to colonialism and Orientalism. The network‌’s collaborative research addresses imaginative and aesthetic rather than sociological questions with particular focus on the function of gender and sexuality in literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of Orientalist images. RENGOO’s first publication explores the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal Other intertwine. With its interrogation of the roles assumed in this interplay by gender, processes of sexualization, and aesthetic formations, the volume suggests new directions to the interdisciplinary study of gender, antisemitism, and Orientalism.

Contributions by Ulrike Brunotte, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Axel Stähler, Achim Rohde, Hannah Lotte Lund, Kathrin Wittler, Hildegard Frübis, Jay Geller, Daniel Wildmann, Laurel Plapp, Yaron Peleg, Christina von Braun, Tatjana Petzer, Sarah Dornhof.

Die Rede von der »Feminisierung der Kultur« beherrschte um 1900 die Wissenscodes von Männlichkeiten und Modernisierung. Interdisziplinär geht dieser Band den konträren Diskursen nach, in denen sich die Rhetoriken einer vermeintlichen Krise hegemonialer weißer Männlichkeiten ausbildeten. Betrachtet werden soziokulturelle, ästhetische und politische Felder sowie auch die Kanonisierung und Dekanonisierung von Wissenschaften. Visionen jüdischer Effeminierung stehen neben solchen des Hypervirilen, wissenschaftliche und poetologische Figuren des Dritten neben rassistischen Maskeraden und technischen Utopien.

In modern societies we seem to witness a renaissance of religious thought and religious passion that at times leads to violent action. „Holy Wars“ are part of this „renaissance“, but it is not at all clear whether this ‚holiness‘ is a relict of religion, a return to religious thinking, or rather the new face of a modernity that dons the mask of religion.

This collection aims at a better understanding of the implications of modern warfare – its form and its causes – for Gender Studies. Gender has on many occasions proven to be a very useful interpretive tool in deciphering historical, cultural and socio-economical subtexts of the modern world.