Karem, Jeff 1973-

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Karem, Jeff 1973-

PERSONAL:

Born February 24, 1973, in KY. Education: Rice University, bachelor's degree; Yale University, doctoral degree.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Cleveland State University, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Department of English, 2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1815, Cleveland, OH 44115-2214. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, assistant professor of English. Also works with community educators, including Connecticut Horizons Program and Langston Hughes Young Writers Project.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities; grants from the Ford Foundation and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

WRITINGS:

The Romance of Authenticity: The Cultural Politics of Regional and Ethnic Literatures, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jeff Karem is an English professor and multiculturalist who specializes in ethnic literature of the United States and Latin America. In his first book, The Romance of Authenticity: The Cultural Politics of Regional and Ethnic Literatures, the author examines the belief held by many writers and critics that the most important goal for regional and ethnic writers is to relate authentic cultural experiences to the reader. "The ‘romance of authenticity’ … refers … [to] the romance between the American reading public and the regional or ethnic writer who is viewed as providing an ‘authentic’ cultural viewpoint, often to the extent of becoming regarded as the premier representative of that culture," explained Helen Lock in the Ethnic Studies Review.

Contrary to the opinion of many critics and readers, Karem presents his case that demanding "authenticity" in regional and ethnic writers is restrictive to their writing and should not be the true goal of regional and ethnic literatures. Using archival research, the author shows how political and economic interests have played too important a role in determining what literature is authentic and how this role has actually undermined the work and the status of these writers. In presenting his argument, he discusses the works of the writers William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Ernest Gaines, Rolando Hinojosa, and Leslie Marmon Silko as representing the Southern, African American, Southwestern, Latino, and Native American experience, respectively.

In the case of Faulkner, for example, the author "begins his regional overview first with a comprehensive charting of the progression of William Faulkner's reception from a Southern romantic to a national writer with ‘provincial authenticity,’" noted Nicholas Sloboda in Studies in the Novel. Writing about Richard Wright, Karem examines how the author was pigeonholed as a "Southern Negro" whose work should be examined primarily for its depiction of the Southern pastoral life of African Americans. Karem ultimately suggests that, instead of a static reading of these authors' works that focuses on cultural and regional authenticity, readers and critics should take a more dynamic approach and view the work as a type of discussion between the author and reader that will ultimately transform the reader's concepts of the work.

"With the strength of Karem's work lying in the concreteness of the individual case studies, his conclusion is also enhanced when he specifically cites a former secretary of MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States) at the 2000 Conference in Tulane University, bemoaning how publishers promote ‘representative superstars’ … in ethnic literature," wrote Sloboda in Studies in the Novel. Noting that the author "challenges the ease with which we congratulate ourselves on our newly broadened curricula," Twentieth Century Literature contributor Abigail Cheever wrote in the same review: "Ultimately, The Romance of Authenticity requests that both mainstream and academic critics be more self-conscious about the type of representative work that is asked of authors and their texts."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Karem, Jeff, The Romance of Authenticity: The Cultural Politics of Regional and Ethnic Literatures, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2004.

PERIODICALS

American Literature, September, 2006, Victoria Ramirez, "Race Mixing: Southern Fiction since the Sixties," review of The Romance of Authenticity, p. 633.

Ethnic Studies Review, summer, 2006, Helen Lock, review of The Romance of Authenticity, p. 111.

Studies in the Novel, spring, 2006, Nicholas Sloboda, review of The Romance of Authenticity, p. 128.

Twentieth Century Literature, fall, 2004, Abigail Cheever, "The Limitations of Authenticity," review of The Romance of Authenticity, p. 331.