Browsing all posts by Habitus
Anthology | E-book | Features | Home Page
Leave a Comment
Habitus: A Diaspora Journal – An Anthology
by Habitus · 03/03/11
Our first digital publication—a collection of some of the best writing from our first six print issues—is now available for download. Use the link below to purchase a copy as a DRM-free ePub, readable on the device of your choice supporting that format, or visit Amazon to get a copy formatted for your Kindle. An iPad edition should be available soon in the iBookstore.
Over the coming year and in the future we plan to bring you a variety of publications in electronic formats, substantially expanding the range of our offerings. We’re currently working on a number of exciting projects, including graphic and photographic work, a series of “reprints” of lost works in translation, and a series of short standalone titles. Digital-only publication, we hope, will allow us to expand Habitus‘ horizons in ways we simply could not afford otherwise.
As we explore further, we’d love to share the results with you, our readers. We sincerely hope you’ll enjoy the texts collected in this anthology, and those we publish in the days to come.
Leave a Comment
Events | News
Habitus editor in Jerusalem
by Habitus · 02/23/11
Habitus editor Joshua Ellison is honored to be presenting at the Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The talk is today—Wednesday, February 23rd—and is open to the public.
Thank you to Habitus advisory-board member Sidra Ezrahi for extending the invitation.
Mexico City | Contributors | News
Habitus contributing editor Ilan Stavans ‘melds worlds.’
by Habitus · 02/13/11
Our dear friend and contributing editor Ilan Stavans is featured in the Amherst Bulletin for his work on the epic Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.
Stavans approached Norton about doing the anthology after the Norton collection on African-American literature was published in the mid-1990s. But he said the germ of the idea probably first came to him when he was doing his doctoral work at Columbia University in the 1980s. He was struck by the contrast between the “quiet, serious” atmosphere of study at Columbia of classic Spanish writers like Cervantes, while in nearby Spanish Harlem, there was a very different world of Latino street life and culture.
“I remember thinking, ‘I need to pay more attention to this kind of vibrant street culture,’” he said. “I began in some probably unconscious way to think of bringing these two worlds together.”
Congratulations, Ilan, on this extraordinary accomplishment.
Elsewhere | News
2011 Best Translated Book Awards: Fiction Longlist
by Habitus · 01/27/11
Our friends at Open Letter Books have announced their longlist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards.
The 25-title fiction longlist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards was announced this morning at Three Percent—a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester. According to award co-founder Chad W. Post, this year’s longlist is a “testament to the number of high-quality works in translation that are making their way to American readers, thanks to a number of talented translators and exciting publishing houses.”
Berlin-issue contributor Jenny Erpenbeck’s made the list for her novel, Visitation, translated by Susan Bernofsky (who translated Erpenbeck for Habitus, too). Susan made the list twice, nominated also for her translation of Microscripts by Robert Walser.
Anthea Bell, whose translation of Maxim Biller’s “The Second-Hand Jew” appears in our Berlin issue, also received a nod, for her translation of Julia Franck’s The Blindness of the Heart
Congratulations to all the finalists.
Berlin | Journal | News
The Berlin issue is now on sale
by Habitus · 01/25/11
Habitus 07: Berlin is now available. Subscribers will receive their copies in the mail shortly. See the contents here and order yours below:
Berlin | Elsewhere | News
Habitus on the World Policy Blog
by Habitus · 01/25/11
Our friends at the World Policy Journal have posted an adapted version of our editor’s note from Berlin as part of their ongoing series on “The Future of the City.” They write:
The theme of the Winter 2010-2011 issue of World Policy Journal is “Megalopolis: The City of the 21st Century.” We asked experts, policymakers, and writers from around the world to answer this question: “In the future, what will our cities look like?” There are some cities, though, where it’s impossible to talk about the future without talking about the past — or ideas about the past. Berlin is one of those places. Joshua Ellison reflects on the city’s past, present, and future in the essay that follows, which is adapted from the introduction to the latest issue of Habitus, a journal of global Jewish culture.
Read the post here.
Moscow | Contributors | Elsewhere | Photography
Jason Eskenazi workshop in Buenos Aires
by Habitus · 01/17/11
Aspiring photojournalists and photography students: Here is a rare opportunity to learn with Jason Eskenazi, celebrated artist and Habitus contributor. Jason writes:
The fall of the Berlin Wall led me out of Queens into the larger world. After trips to Germany and Romania for their first democratic elections I traveled to Russia in 1991, just before the August coup that marked the end of the USSR, and have returned many times since culminating in a photography book project called Wonderland: A Fairy Tale of the Soviet Monolith, exhibited at Visa Pour L’ Image in Perpignan, France, at the Leica Gallery in New York and winner of Best Photography Book 2008 by Pictures of the Year International.
Jason’s work was featured in our Moscow issue, and in this Habitus-produced video:
Of course, Buenos Aires is also a place near and dear to Habitus, so this is an experience we can wholeheartedly recommend. The workshop is scheduled for mid July. More info here.
Berlin | Features | Interview | Journal
A Conversation with Horst Hoheisel
by Habitus · 01/13/11
During the contentious debate over what form Berlin’s planned Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe would take, Horst Hoheisel became infamous as the man who proposed blowing up the Brandenburg Gate. He first came to prominence as a designer of monuments with the construction of his “negative fountain” in his hometown of Kassel. The project was conceived as a mirror image of a fountain that was destroyed during World War II; a phantom monument, surrounding the empty space left behind with a reflecting pool. “For Hoheisel,” James E. Young explains, “even the fragment was a decorative lie, suggesting itself as a remnant of a destruction no one knew much about.”
In Germany and throughout the world, Hoheisel has proposed memory works designed to provoke anger and stimulate debate by upending the conventions of the memorial form. The artist writes, “I don’t need the memorial as an object itself, the idea of thinking creatively is a monument and memorial on its own because particular monuments tell much more about our time, about ourselves and less about those victims.”
Habitus: Your personal history overlaps so closely with the history of Germany after the war. When you were young, what did you know about the war?
Hoheisel: I was born in December 1944, in the last month of the war. My parents were from Latvia, from Riga. Now I live in Kassel, Germany.
When I was working on the Aschrottbrunnen memorial fountain in Kassel, I found out from my research that the Jewish people of Kassel had been deported to Riga. So the story suddenly became very personal, very near to my own family biography.
News
Habitus in Hadassah Magazine
by Habitus · 01/05/11
We are very pleased to share a little feature about Habitus from the latest edition of Hadassah Magazine. Writer Amy Klein introduces the magazine like this: “Although much of Jewish history mourns the diaspora and the Jewish people’s disbursement to the four corners of the earth, one literary journal celebrates it.” Thanks to Amy and Hadassah for the support.
Mexico City | News
Mexico City issue on sale now
by Habitus · 09/29/10
Our new issue on sale now! Order yours today.
Some highlights include:
- An incendiary excerpt from an anonymously penned novel, The Stuttering Terrorist, about an attack on a Mexico City synagogue
- Pedro Meyer, one of Mexico’s most prominent photographers, remembers the deaths of his parents
- The Mexican-American writer and critic Ilan Stavans imagines an “autobiography” of his own face
- Photojournalist Katie Orlinsky rides the trains with migrant workers
- The controversial artist Yoshua Okón tells us how he implicates his audience through humor
- Monica Ruzansky creates portraits of Mexico’s Jewish adolescents
- Novelist Margo Glantz talks about a lifetime of loving and longing for beautiful shoes
