Are There Great Houses in Jewish Fiction? | Caroline Rody

In the spring of 2025, English Professor Caroline Rody shared her research for a forthcoming book, "Writing the Great House: Transformations of a Topos Across World English Fiction." In her presentation, "Are There Great Houses in Jewish Fiction?", Professor Rody examined how the literary trope of the great house, in English fiction a grand, imposing dwelling space but in American fiction often the feared, resented embodiment of tyranny and corruption, becomes in modern, diasporic Jewish literature an odd, ambivalent topos. Chapters 00:00 What is the Great House Trope 02:00 Great House as National Signifier 02:55 The Great House in "Fiddler on the Roof" 05:28 Complexity of the Jewish "Home" 06:22 Nicole Krauss's "Great House" 07:04 From Temple to Book as Great House 09:00 Provisional Nature of Jewish Home-building 12:56 Rebecca Goldstein's "Mazel" 13:35 Sukkah Huts as Home 15:34 Sholem Aleichem's "Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son" 16:10 Isaac Basehvis Singer's "The Slave" 16:54 Abraham Cahan's "The Rise of David Levinsky" 17:25 Evolution of America as Jewish Homeland 18:08 Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" 20:25 Lore Segal's "Her First American" 21:19 Gish Jen's "Mona in the Promised Land" 24:07 Allegra Goodman's "Kaaterskill Falls" 27:06 Christophe Boltanski's "The Safe House" 32:27 Natasha Solomons' "The House at Tyneford" 38:49 Conclusion: A House of Books