Bigotry in the Austrian Alps? Ohio Wesleyan University’s Alison Rose, Ph.D., uses the 1904 arrest and bigamy trial of a Jewish woman in rural Austria to explore the region’s historic “relationship between Jews and non-Jews and attitudes towards women and sexuality.”
Rose’s new book, “Antisemitism, Gender Bias, and the ‘Hervay Affair’ of 1904: Bigotry in the Austrian Alps,” will be published in October by Lexington Books, an imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
“I hope my book will provide readers with a vivid account of what life was like for an unconventional Jewish woman at the turn of the century,” Rose said, “by exploring the interactions that defined and circumscribed her life and, in doing so, shed light on prejudices that persist today.”
Reviewers already are praising the book for the insights it brings to the era, a news release states.
Deborah Hertz of the University of California at San Diego said Rose, indeed, “sheds new light on the vexed history of hatred of the Jews in Austrian history. She deftly explores this neglected episode to show how antisemitism then and there was riddled with hatred of women in general and Jewish women in particular.”
Klaus Hödl of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz said Rose’s book is a “deeply researched and well-written study on Austrian antisemitism. It will profoundly enrich our knowledge of a dark chapter of Austrian Jewish history.”
Rose, currently a part-time instructor in religion at Ohio Wesleyan, earned her doctorate in Jewish history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on Jewish women in Vienna and her previous book, “Jewish Women in Fin de Siecle Vienna,” explores the “myriad ways in which Jewish women contributed to the development of Viennese culture and participated widely in politics and cultural spheres.”
You can learn more about “Antisemitism, Gender Bias, and the ‘Hervay Affair’ of 1904” at https://rowman.com and more about Ohio Wesleyan’s Department of Religion at www.owu.edu/religion.
