xbn .

Benjamin Balthaser

Benjamin Balthaser is Associate Professor of Multi-Ethnic U.S. Literature at Indiana University, South Bend. He is the author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism (U Michigan Press 2016) and a collection of poetry, Dedication (Partisan Press 2011). His current book Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the U.S. Jewish Left, is forthcoming from Verso. His creative and critical work has also appeared in journals such as American Quarterly, Boston Review, Historical Materialism, and elsewhere. He is currently associate editor of American Quarterly.

Essays

On Being a Weapon:  Jewishness 431 days into a Genocide 

In being used as a weapon, American Jews—even those who resist state power—find ourselves imbued with a power we did not want, playing a role for which we did not audition. Rather than gifted with a second sight, we are caught inside a hall of mirrors.

(((Jewish))) literature and political theology

Villanova University’s Center for Political Theology is thrilled to launch this new blog, Literature and Political Theology, with a post from Benjamin Balthaser, one of its editors. We will be sharing posts from the other editors, Kris Trujillo, Mimi Winick, Brook Wilensky-Lanford, and James Ford III over the coming months, between symposia on literary works. Among the literary works that will be discussed are texts by Virginia Woolf, Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Susan Taubes, and Zora Neale Hurston, and Helene Wecker.