Hollywood's Chosen People

Investigates the relationship between Jewish identity and American film from a number of perspectives.

Daniel Bernardi is professor and chair at the Department of Cinema of San Francisco State University. He is the author of Star Trek and History: Race-ing toward a White Future and co-author of Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islam Extremism, and the Struggle for Strategic Influence. Murray Pomerance is a Canadian film scholar, author, and professor who teaches in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University and in the joint program in communication and culture at Ryerson University and York University. He has written extensively on film, cinematic experience, and performance. Most recently he authored Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue: Eight Reflections on Cinema and Edith Valmaine. Pomerance is the editor and co-editor of a dozen books and the editor of several book series on film at Rutgers University Press and at the State University of New York Press. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson is professor of history, director of Jewish studies, and Irving and Miriam Lowe Chair of Modern Judaism at Arizona State University. She specializes in Jewish intellectual history. Judaism and science, and Judaism and ecology. In addition to numerous essays and book chapters, she is the author of the award-winning Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon and Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge and Well-Being and is the editor of five books.