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Smart Jews addresses one of the most controversial theories of our day: the alleged connection between race (or ethnicity), intelligence, and virtue. Sander L. Gilman shows that such theories have a long, disturbing history. He examines a wide range of texts - scientific treatises, novels, films, philosophical works, and operas - that assert the greater intelligence (and, often, lesser virtue) of Jews.
The book opens with a discussion of concepts that relate intelligence and race (particularly those that figure in the controversial bestseller The Bell Curve); it then describes "scientific" theories of Jewish superior intelligence that were developed in the ninteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gilman explores the reactions to those theories by Jewish scientists and intellectuals of that era, including Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
The conclusion turns to how such ideas figure in modern novels and films, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon to Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's List and Robert Redford's Quiz Show.
- Gilman demonstrates how stereotypes can permeate society, finding expression in everything from scientific work to popular culture. And he shows how the seemingly flattering attribution of superior intelligence has served to isolate Jews and to cast upon them the imputation of lesser virtue.
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Previews available in: English
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1
Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Jewish Superior Intelligence (Abraham Lincoln Lecture)
July 28, 1997, University of Nebraska Press
Paperback
in English
- New Ed edition
0803270690 9780803270695
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2
Smart Jews: the construction of the image of Jewish superior intelligence
1996, University of Nebraska Press
in English
0803221584 9780803221581
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August 23, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
April 30, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
August 6, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |