Background
James D. Bloom was born in 1951, in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He is the son of Bernard and Muriel (Singer) Bloom.
Bennington College
University of California Santa Cruz
Rutgers University
(The names of Mike Gold (1893-1967) and Joseph Freeman (18...)
The names of Mike Gold (1893-1967) and Joseph Freeman (1897-1965) predominate in cultural histories and literary annals of the 1920s and 1930s as among the most influential literary Communists during the heyday of American Communism. James Bloom examines their works and careers, demonstrating the enduring relevance of these once prominent writers. Each writer's reputation now rests on one major work, Gold's Jews Without Money (1930) and Freeman's An American Testament (1936). Their more comprehensive contributions, however, have been largely forgotten. This is an ironic development, Bloom observes, in view of the steadily leftward movement of literary scholarship in the U.S. over the last twenty years and in view of the persistence of their agendas in much contemporary writing, notably E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel. Left Letters rescues two writers whose influence and accomplishments have been eclipsed for the past half-century. This valuable book complements efforts to recover "proletarian" authors from the shipwreck of party-line writing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231076908/?tag=2022091-20
1992
(The comedic work of the children of modern Jewish immigra...)
The comedic work of the children of modern Jewish immigrants overturned the prevailing languages and imageries with which an Anglocentric United States had traditionally represented and expanded itself. In ^IGravity Fails: The Comic Jewish Shaping of Modern America^R, James D. Bloom approaches these developments by first surveying this transformation as it affected literature, entertainment, commerce, and politics, and then offers sharply focused chapters that look at changes in sexual candor, reactions to the Holocaust, and critiques of race. Indeed, the personae discussed here pioneered unprecedented candor toward and scrutiny about sex and violence, and no other book delves as deeply or as widely among art forms, media, and levels of cultural hierarchy. Including considerations of the work of such diverse artists as Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, Gilda Radner, Philip Roth, Jerry Seinfeld, and Stephen Sondheim, Gravity Fails provides a unique, penetrating, and hilarious look at a major force in the progress of American culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/027597720X/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(Hollywood Intellect takes off from the wide-spread hand-w...)
Hollywood Intellect takes off from the wide-spread hand-wringing over the fate or disappearance of so-called public intellectuals. An account of the title phenomenon, Hollywood Intellect challenges assumptions on which such discussions have rested. James D. Bloom argues that such assumptions are the result of misleading inattention to the intellectual work that mass culture performs. Much of America's influential intellectual work has come out of Hollywood, which has long helped shape America's intellectual agenda. Bloom shows how Hollywood movies often do intellectual work as ambitious as the intellectual work in 'art films,' poems and novels, museums and erudite quarterlies. Hollywood Intellect prompts its readers to reflect on the impact of a variety of Hollywood movies with some of the same assumptions, expectations, and questions customarily applied to literary writing. Hollywood Intellect also illustrates how, in examining the emergence of Hollywood and stardom in general as shapers of the public mind, some of our most renowned poets and novelists enriched our experience of mass entertainment and of elite culture. Drawing on a range of literary works and movies, as well as on the careers of both Hollywood and literary celebrities, Bloom documents how Hollywood regulates curiosity, arbitrates civilization, construes and probes stardom, polices genre, and shapes our language.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739129244/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(During the first and second centuries A.D., the supremacy...)
During the first and second centuries A.D., the supremacy of the Roman Empire was aggressively challenged by three Jewish rebellions. The facts surrounding the initial uprising of A.D. 66-74 have been filtered through the biased accounts of Judeao Roman historian Flavius Josephus. Primary information regarding the subsequent Diaspora Revolt (A.D. 115-117) and the Bar Kochba Rebellion (A.D. 132-135) is limited to fragmentary anecdotes emphasizing the religious implications of the two insurrections. In contrast, this analytical history focuses objectively on the military aspects of all three Judean uprisings. The events leading up to each rebellion are detailed, while the nine appendices cover such topics as the nature and number of the Jewish rebels and the factual reliability of the controversial Josephus. One appendix hypothesizes an alternative history of the war between Jerusalem and Rome.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786444797/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a c...)
This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a concept which has spread beyond academia and become a staple of cultural conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Male gazing has typically been disparaged and even stigmatized as a reflection of misogyny and an instrument of objectification, often justifiably so. But as this book argues and illustrates, male gazing can also be understood as an illuminating, intellectually engaging, aesthetically compelling, and even politically progressive practice. This study recounts how the author’s own coming-of-an-age as a gazer became the basis for his long career teaching and writing about American fiction and poetry and poetry, canonical and contemporary, as well as about film, painting, TV, and rock-and-roll. It includes closely-reasoned analyses of work by James Baldwin, Rembrandt, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Bob Dylan, Robert Stone,Tim O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Frank O’Hara, Italo Calvino, John Schlesinger as well such cultural phenomena as the British Invasion of the 1960s, the Judgment of Paris in Greek mythology, the technology of seeing (kaleidoscopes, microscopes, telescopes) and the concept of 'objectification' itself. This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a concept which has spread beyond academia and become a staple of cultural conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Male gazing has typically been disparaged and even stigmatized as a reflection of misogyny and an instrument of objectification, often justifiably so. But as this book argues and illustrates, male gazing can also be understood as an illuminating, intellectually engaging, aesthetically compelling, and even politically progressive practice. This study recounts how the author’s own coming-of-an-age as a gazer became the basis for his long career teaching and writing about American fiction and poetry and poetry, canonical and contemporary, as well as about film, painting, TV, and rock-and-roll. It includes closely-reasoned analyses of work by James Baldwin, Rembrandt, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Bob Dylan, Robert Stone,Tim O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Frank O’Hara, Italo Calvino, John Schlesinger as well such cultural phenomena as the British Invasion of the 1960s, the Judgment of Paris in Greek mythology, the technology of seeing (kaleidoscopes, microscopes, telescopes) and the concept of 'objectification' itself. This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a concept which has spread beyond academia and become a staple of cultural conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Male gazing has typically been disparaged and even stigmatized as a reflection of misogyny and an instrument of objectification, often justifiably so. But as this book argues and illustrates, male gazing can also be understood as an illuminating, intellectually engaging, aesthetically compelling, and even politically progressive practice. This study recounts how the author’s own coming-of-an-age as a gazer became the basis for his long career teaching and writing about American fiction and poetry and poetry, canonical and contemporary, as well as about film, painting, TV, and rock-and-roll. It includes closely-reasoned analyses of work by James Baldwin, Rembrandt, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Bob Dylan, Robert Stone,Tim O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Frank O’Hara, Italo Calvino, John Schlesinger as well such cultural phenomena as the British Invasion of the 1960s, the Judgment of Paris in Greek mythology, the technology of seeing (kaleidoscopes, microscopes, telescopes) and the concept of 'objectification' itself.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3319599445/?tag=2022091-20
2017
James D. Bloom was born in 1951, in Newark, New Jersey, United States. He is the son of Bernard and Muriel (Singer) Bloom.
Bloom received his bachelor's degree from Bennington College and a master's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 1983, he obtained his doctotate from Rutgers University.
Since 1982, Bloom holds the position of professor of English at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He also works as a freelance writer.
(The names of Mike Gold (1893-1967) and Joseph Freeman (18...)
1992(The comedic work of the children of modern Jewish immigra...)
2003(This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a c...)
2017(Hollywood Intellect takes off from the wide-spread hand-w...)
2009(During the first and second centuries A.D., the supremacy...)
2010Bloom is married to Robin Beaty.