January 16, 2004 SELINSGROVE, (Pa.) – A book reception and reading to celebrate the launch of a new book by Laurence Roth, associate professor of English and Jewish studies and coordinator of the Jewish studies program at Susquehanna University, will be held from 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5, at The Kind Café, 16 N. Market St., Selinsgrove, Pa. Titled Inspecting Jews: American Jewish Detective Stories, the book is the first to explore what Jewish detective stories uncover about America and American Jewish culture. Due for release by Rutgers University Press in February, Inspecting Jews also represents one of the first book-length studies of American Jewish popular literature. In the book, Roth analyzes stories of American Jewish detectives – including Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small, Faye Kellerman’s Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, Stuart Kaminsky’s Abe Lieberman, and Rochelle Krich’s Jessica Drake – not only as a genre of literature, but also as a reflection of contemporary acculturation in the American Jewish popular arts. He argues that the detective story, located at the intersection of narrative and popular culture in modern America, examines the need for order in a disorderly society, and thus offers a window into the negotiation of Jewish identity. “What will readers uncover when they inspect Inspecting Jews,” says Norman Finkelstein, author of Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity. “Quite simply, one of the liveliest contributions to the field of Jewish cultural studies that has appeared in some time. Bringing together the Talmud and consumer research techniques, midrash and police procedurals, this is a work about ‘kosher hybridity,’ a term that Roth has coined to describe new forms of Jewishness in America.” Sylvia Barack Fishman, author of Double or Nothing: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage, describes Roth’s work as “clever analysis, grounded in both Jewish and literary scholarship.” And David N. Myers, author of Re-inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History, says, “With Roth's skillful eye, the detective story becomes a fascinating site for the delicate negotiation between Jewish tradition and American cultural norms.” Roth holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was also a lecturer in American Jewish literature and founding editor/editor-in-chief of the journal, The Jacaranda Review. At Susquehanna, he teaches American literature and popular culture, American-Jewish literature, Jewish cultural studies, and literary theory. He is also the editor of Modern Language Studies, a nationally respected journal distributed to university libraries and subscribers across the country, and featuring articles on all areas of English, American and comparative literature, and the literatures of the modern languages. Contact: Victoria Kidd 570-372-4119 #vk/1590#