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From generation to generation, three outstanding American Jewish directors-William Wyler, Sidney Lumet, and Steven Spielberg--advance a tradition of Jewish writers, artists, and leaders who propagate the ethical basis of the American Idea and Creed.

From generation to generation, three outstanding American Jewish directors¿William Wyler, Sidney Lumet, and Steven Spielberg--advance a tradition of Jewish writers, artists, and leaders who propagate the ethical basis of the American Idea and Creed. They strive to renew the American spirit by insisting that America must live up to its values and ideals. These directors accentuate the ethical responsibility for the other as a basis of the American soul and a source for strengthening American liberal democracy. In the manner of the jeremiad, their films challenge America to achieve a liberal democratic culture for all people by becoming more inclusive and by modernizing the American Idea. Following an introduction that relates aspects of modern ethical thought to the search for Americäs soul, the book divides into three sections. The Wyler section focuses on the director¿s social vision of a changing America. The Lumet section views his films as dramatizing Lumet¿s dynamicand aggressive social and ethical conscience. The Spielberg section tracks his films as a movement toward American redemption and renewal that aspires to realize Lincoln¿s vision of America as the hope of the world. The directors, among many others, perpetuate a ¿New Covenant¿ that advocates change and renewal in the American experience.

The book explores the liminal aesthetics of U.S. cultural and literary practice. Interrogating the notion of a presumptive unity of the American experience, Moveable Designs argues that inner conflict, divisiveness, and contradiction are integral to the nation's cultural designs, themes, and motifs. The study suggests that U.S. literary and cultural practice is permeated by 'moveable designs'-flexible, yet constant features of hegemonial practice that constitute an integral element of American national self-fashioning. The naturally pervasive liminality of U.S. cultural production is the key to understanding the resilience of American culture. Moveable Designs looks at artistic expressions across various media types (literature, paintings, film, television), seeking to illuminate critical phases of U.S. American literature and culture-from the revolutionary years to the movements of romanticism, realism, and modernism, up to the postmodern era. It combines a wide array of approaches, from cultural history and social anthropology to phenomenology. Connecting an analysis of literary and cultural texts with approaches from design theory, the book proposes a new way of understanding American culture as design. It is one of the unique characteristics of American culture that it creates-or, rather, designs-potency out of its inner conflicts and apparent disunities. That which we describe as an identifiable 'American identity' is actually the product of highly vulnerable, alternating processes of dissolution and self-affirmation.