Here you can find a record of almost all my publications – from scholarly journal articles to newspaper articles – listed with the most recent first. In most cases there is either a downloadable pdf or a link to the publication itself. You can search by publication type (academic, non-academic, book reviews etc), by theme and by keyword. Enjoy!
What do you do when you are drawn to the bad guys, but the baddest guys around are just too bad?
Publication Date: October 7, 2020
Theme: Jews and Metal, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Metal Music and Culture
Category: Journalism and essays
How metal’s Christian apocalyptic sensibility can ground hope for a Jewish new year of renewal.
Publication Date: September 21, 2020
Theme: Jews and Metal, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Metal Music and Culture
Category: Journalism and essays
How Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire’s ‘Left Out’ shows how love was always a greater problem than hate in Corbyn’s Labour Party
Publication Date: September 11, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Politics
Category: Book reviews, Journalism and essays
Special issue co-edited with Dominic Williams
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Theme: Jews and Metal, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Metal Music and Culture
Category: Edited issues and publications
Albert Friedlander's writings were part of a generational struggle to find a language in which to speak of the experience of the Holocaust. This struggle was, in part, a response to the ‘unspeakability’ of the Holocaust, the silence and denial of its perpetrators. As such, in the postwar period, the perpetrators of the Holocaust also struggled to find the words to speak of what they had done. This short article goes on to speculate on the implications of the unspeakability of the Holocaust and other genocides. It suggests that this unspeakability is beginning to break down as desires are spoken of more openly. As such, it is possible that current and future generations will have to embark on a different struggle to that of Albert Friedlander. While he could count on an assumed moral consensus that the Holocaust was wrong, current and future generations may no longer be able to rely on this assumption.
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Denial, Ignorance and Stupidity, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness
Category: Journal articles
While genocide, killing and transgressive acts of violence are common themes in metal, there is a relative absence of metal lyrics and other ways of engaging with the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews as a theme. This stands in contrast to premodern genocides that are often the subject of fascination. Even when the Holocaust is apparently ‘celebrated’ by neo-Nazi metal acts, some of the specificities of the genocide, together with its applicability to Jews today, may be elided and effaced. When the Holocaust is engaged with in non-neo-Nazi metal lyrics, it is usually with great care and the victims themselves are rarely mentioned. The Holocaust constitutes a ‘problem’ in metal that makes silence and absence a preferable option to engagement. The reasons for this lie in part in metal’s self-conscious avoidance of ‘politics’, the lack of salience of Jews and antisemitism, and the excessive nature of the Holocaust itself.
Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Jews and Metal, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Metal Music and Culture
Category: Journal articles
The boundary-crossing of Haredim on the beach.
Publication Date: August 28, 2020
Theme: Jews, Judaism and Jewishness
Category: Journalism and essays
Publication Date: July 29, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Conflict Resolution, Civility and Dialogue, Politics
Category: Journalism and essays
Correspondence with James Harris
Publication Date: July 24, 2020
Theme: Culture, Miscellaneous
Category: Journalism and essays
WiIl the impact of Covid-19 be as ephemeral as the impact of the death of Diana?
Publication Date: July 13, 2020
Theme: Community, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Miscellaneous
Category: Journalism and essays
This is a version of a paper I presented at a seminar held by the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton on 30 June 2020. It is a draft that will possibly form the basis of a longer article. Comments and suggestions would be welcome.
Publication Date: July 9, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate
Category: Conference papers and lectures, Journalism and essays
On Saturday 14 March - during the last weekend before work, school and shops started to close – my son and I sat down to dine on a French 24-hour military ration. Earlier, we had excitedly unpacked the contents of the box of delights and laid it out carefully on my bedroom floor
Publication Date: July 6, 2020
Theme: Miscellaneous, Small worlds
Category: Journalism and essays
Publication Date: July 1, 2020
Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire
Category: Journalism and essays
From Basque sports to military ration packs, Keith Kahn-Harris has been swept along by algorithms during the pandemic.
[Also available as audio]
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire
Category: Journalism and essays
Annexing the West Bank punctures useful delusions about Israel and Zionism which have, until now, kept together otherwise fractious Diaspora Jewish communities – and their proudly 'big tent' organizations
Publication Date: May 20, 2020
Theme: Community, Israel/Palestine, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness
Category: Journalism and essays
The UK government’s approach to the pandemic has been poor, but the bridgehead has not yet been built to the destructive mania of Trumpian conservativism
Publication Date: May 6, 2020
Theme: Denial, Ignorance and Stupidity, Politics
Category: Journalism and essays
What an offhand celebrity comment can tell us about the legacy of empire
Publication Date: May 4, 2020
Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Culture, Denial, Ignorance and Stupidity
Category: Journalism and essays
Publication Date: May 1, 2020
Theme: Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire
Category: Journalism and essays
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