Academic Studies Press

Largely forgotten during the last 20 years of his life, the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) has occupied a singular and often controversial position over the past sixty years as a founding figure of documentary, avant-garde, and political-propaganda film practice. Creator of "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929), perhaps the most celebrated non-fiction film ever made, Vertov is equally renowned as the most militant opponent of the canons of mainstream filmmaking in the history of cinema. This book, the first in a three-volume study, addresses Vertov's youth in the largely Jewish city of Bialystok, his education in Petrograd, his formative years of involvement in filmmaking, his experiences during the Russian Civil War, and his interests in music, poetry and technology.

The three novellas of Farewell, Aylis take place over decades of transition in a country that rather resembles modern-day Azerbaijan.

In Yemen, a Soviet traveler takes an afternoon stroll and finds himself suspected of defecting to America. In Stone Dreams, an actor explores the limits of one man’s ability to live a moral life amid conditions of sociopolitical upheaval, ethnic cleansing, and petty professional intrigue. In A Fantastical Traffic Jam, those who serve the aging leader of a corrupt, oil-rich country scheme to stay alive. 

Farewell, Aylis, a new essay by the author that reflects on the political firestorm surrounding these novellas and his current situation as a prisoner of conscience in Azerbaijan, was commissioned especially for this Academic Studies Press edition.

Russian Cuisine in Exile brings the essays of Pyotr Vail and Alexander Genis, originally written in the mid-1980s, to an English-speaking audience. A must-read for scholars, students and general readers interested in Russian studies, but also for specialists in émigré literature, mobility studies, popular culture, and food studies. These essays—beloved by Russians in the U.S., the Russian diaspora across the world, and in post-Soviet Russia—narrate everyday experiences and re-imagine the identities of immigrants through their engagement with Russian cuisine. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book has been translated “not word for word, but smile for smile,” to use the phrase of Vail and Genis’s fellow émigré writer Sergei Dovlatov. Translators Angela Brintlinger and Thomas Feerick have supplied copious authoritative and occasionally amusing commentaries.

The notebooks included in the three volume set 100 Conversations You Need to Have contain A Philosophy Guide, A Stoic Philosophy Guide, and A Chinese Philosophy Guide.

Each notebook offers an accessible and thought-provoking collection of life’s big questions and corresponding answers from some of history’s greatest philosophers. Readers are provided with the opportunity to answer each question, turn the page and receive a short piece of advice from thinkers on topics that include: 

• Happiness
• Friendship
• Discipline
• Patience
• The meaning of life and death
• And other essential topics

The list of philosophers that are featured in each notebook is very multicultural. It includes both men and women and spans across time, including, among others, Aristotle, Seneca, Simone de Beauvoir, Lao Tzu, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Alfarabi, Jean-Paul Sartre and Pema Chodron.

These notebooks duplicate the Socratic dialogue method and embody the idea of philosophy being a pathway to a more fulfilling life by creating 100 meaningful dialogues between the reader and a diverse array of interlocutors who will guide them on their journey to crafting a good life.

Edited by Maxim D. Shrayer, a leading specialist in Russia’s Jewish culture, this definitive anthology of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, nonfiction and poetry by eighty Jewish-Russian writers explores both timeless themes and specific tribulations of a people’s history. A living record of the rich and vibrant legacy of Russia’s Jews, this reader-friendly and comprehensive anthology features original English translations. In its selection and presentation, the anthology tilts in favor of human interest and readability. It is organized both chronologically and topically (e.g. “Seething Times: 1860s-1880s”; “Revolution and Emigration: 1920s-1930s”; “Late Soviet Empire and Collapse: 1960s-1990s”). A comprehensive headnote introduces each section. Individual selections have short essays containing information about the authors and the works that are relevant to the topic. The editor’s opening essay introduces the topic and relevant contexts at the beginning of the volume; the overview by the leading historian of Russian Jewry John D. Klier appears the end of the volume. Over 500,000 Russian-speaking Jews presently live in America and about 1 million in Israel, while only about 170,000 Jews remain in Russia. The great outflux of Jews from the former USSR and the post-Soviet states has changed the cultural habitat of world Jewry. A formidable force and a new Jewish Diaspora, Russian Jews are transforming the texture of daily life in the US and Canada, and Israel. A living memory, a space of survival and a record of success, Voice of Jewish-Russian Literature ensures the preservation and accessibility of the rich legacy of Russian-speaking Jews.

The Jew in Medieval Iberia is an exploration of the richness and diversity of Jewish society in Christian Iberia from 1100-1500, providing a fresh look at the ways in which medieval Jews conceived of themselves and their communities, as well as their relationship to the surrounding society. The essays collected in this volume transcend older stereotypes of Christian persecution and Jewish piety to reveal a complex and vibrant community of merchants and scholars, townsmen and women, cultural intermediaries and guardians of religious tradition. Taken together, they present a portrait that adds greater nuances to our understanding of both medieval Jewish and medieval Spanish history.

In his captivating new book, based on new evidence and a series of interviews, author and scholar Maxim D. Shrayer offers a richly journalistic portrait of Russia’s dwindling yet still vibrant and influential Jewish community. 

This is simultaneously an in-depth exploration of the texture of Jewish life in Putin’s Russia and an émigré’s moving elegy for Russia’s Jews, which forty years ago constituted one of the world’s largest Jewish populations and which presently numbers only about 180,000. Why do Jews continue to live in Russia after the antisemitism and persecution they had endured there? What are the prospects of Jewish life in Russia? What awaits the children born to Jews who have not left? With or Without You asks and seeks to answer some of the central questions of modern Jewish history and culture.

This volume contributes to the growing field of comparative Jewish and American law, presenting twenty-six essays characterized by a number of distinct features. The essays will appeal to legal scholars and, at the same time, will be accessible and of interest to a more general audience of intellectually curious readers. These contributions are faithful to Jewish law on its own terms, while applying comparative methods to offer fresh perspectives on complex issues in the Jewish legal system. Through careful comparative analysis, the essays also turn to Jewish law to provide insights into substantive and conceptual areas of the American legal system, particularly areas of American law that are complex, controversial, and unsettled.

This volume of original essays, by some of Israel’s most remarkable public and academic voices, offers a series of state-of-the art, accessible analyses of Israel’s ever-evolving theater of statecraft, public debates, and legal and cultural dramas, its deep divisions and—more surprisingly, perhaps—its internal affinities and common denominators. Contributors: Fania Oz-Salzberger, Yedidia Z. Stern, Ayman K. Agbaria, Aviad Bakshi, Ariel L. Bendor, Ruth Gavison, Michael M. Karayanni, David Passig, Avi Sagi, Gideon Sapir, Anita Shapira, Daniel Statman, Gadi Taub, Shira Wolosky, Alexander Yakobson, Yaffa Zilbershats.

Faith: Jewish Perspectives explores important questions in both modern and premodern Jewish philosophy regarding the idea of faith. Is believing a voluntary action, or do believers find themselves within the experience of faith against their will? Can faith be understood through other means (psychological, epistemic, and so forth), or is it only comprehensible from the inside, that is, from within the religious world? Is a subjective experience of faith fundamentally communicative, meaning that it includes intelligible and transmittable universal elements, or is it a private experience that we can point to or talk about through indirect means (poetic, lyrical, and so forth), but never fully decipher? This book presents various manifestations of the concept of faith in Judaism as a tradition engaged in a dialogue with the outside world. It will function as an opening and an invitation to an ongoing conversation with faith.