Parking the Ark in Niagara Falls: Mordecai Manuel Noah and the Imposition of Meaning in Jewish American Literary History

Abstract

HE AM BIDGE HTORY OF EW SH AM EICAN LITATURE To end on a rather parochial note, I’ll provide a postscript for Princeton’s 2001 conference, “Celebrating Jewish American Writers,” inaugurating the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Collection of Jewish American Writers. Since 2001, Mr. Milberg has been steadily enhancing the collection with the extraordinary acquisitions that recently became the focus of an exhibition entitled, “By Dawn’s Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War,” iterations of which have been mounted at the Center for Jewish History and the New York Historical Society. And now, nearly two decades after the celebrations of 2001, Mr. Milberg has generously committed to establishing at Princeton a new Chair in American Jewish Studies—a chair that, far from being homeless and exiled, has been offered a warm home in American Studies. The world turns.