When Cowboys Come Home

Veterans, Authenticity, and Manhood in Post–World War II America

AARON GEORGE

When Cowboys Come Home: Veterans, Authenticity, and Manhood in Post–World War II America is a cultural and intellectual history of the 1950s that argues that World War II led to a breakdown of traditional markers of manhood and opened space for veterans to reimagine what masculinity could mean. One particularly important strand of thought, which influenced later anxieties over “other-direction” and “conformity,” argued that masculinity was not defined by traits like bravery, stoicism, and competitiveness but instead by authenticity, shared camaraderie, and emotional honesty. To elucidate this challenge to traditional “frontiersman” masculinity, Aaron George presents three intellectual biographies of important veterans who became writers after the war: James Jones, the writer of the monumentally important war novel From Here to Eternity; Stewart Stern, one of the most important screenwriters of the fifties and sixties, including for Rebel without a Cause; and Edward Field, a bohemian poet who used poetry to explore his love for other men. Through their lives, George shows how wartime disabused men of the notion that war was inherently a brave or heroic enterprise and how the alienation they felt upon their return led them to value the authentic connections they made with other men during the war.

AARON GEORGE is an assistant professor of American history at Tarleton University in Stephenville, Texas.

New Israeli Horror Local Cinema, Global Genre

OLGA GERSHENSON

Before 2010, there were no Israeli horror films. Then distinctly Israeli serial killers, zombies, vampires, and ghosts invaded local screens. The next decade saw a blossoming of the genre by young Israeli filmmakers. New Israeli Horror is the first book to tell their story. Through in-depth analysis, engaging storytelling, and interviews with the filmmakers, Olga Gershenson explores their films from inception to reception. She shows how these films challenge traditional representations of Israel and its people, while also appealing to audiences around the world.

Gershenson introduces an innovative conceptual framework of adaptation, which explains how filmmakers adapt global genre tropes to local reality. It illuminates the ways in which Israeli horror borrows and diverges from its international models. New Israeli Horror offers an exciting and original contribution to our understanding of both Israeli cinema and the horror genre.

OLGA GERSHENSON is a professor of Judaic and Near Eastern studies and of film studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (Rutgers University Press) and Gesher: Russian Theater in Israel and the editor of Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender when Cowboys come home

252 pp 6 b/w images 6.125 x 9.25 978-1-9788-2156-9 paper $39.95S 978-1-9788-2157-6 cloth $130.00SU

November 2023

Literary Studies • U.S. History Cultural Studies

222 pp 6 color and 2 b/w images, 1 table 6.125 x 9.25 978-1-9788-3784-3 paper $34.95S 978-1-9788-3785-0 cloth $120.00SU

November 2023

Film Studies • Middle Eastern Studies