The Black Atlantic

Paul Gilroy

Much hay has been made of life in the diaspora, and this book—while occasionally a little theory/jargon heavy—is an incredibly rich conceptualization of the material and cultural life of diaspora. For Gilroy, it's not diaspora as a sense of exile in which one is always longing to return "home," but rather about the ways that culture, ideas, and material circulate in and around diasporic communities. This is not a book about Jews, but it sheds important light on life in the diaspora.

Ari Y. Kelman is an assistant professor of American Studies at UC Davis. Most of his research focuses on popular and unpopular cultures, both Jewish and not. He's working on a book about recorded sound, and has co-authored two studies and a series of reports with Steven M. Cohen about contemporary Jewish culture and identity. His first book Station Identification: a cultural history of Yiddish radio in America will be published by the University of California press.