Public Policy at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy | University of Toronto

Bio
Andrea Most is Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of modern American literature and culture, Jewish cultural studies, ecocriticism and environmental literature, food studies, theatre and performance. Her first book Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Harvard UP, 2004) won the 2005 Kurt Weill Prize for distinguished scholarship on music theatre. Her second book, Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America (NYU Press, 2013) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Culture. Prof. Most’s current research project, Holy Lands, focuses on food, agriculture, and religion in Canada and the United States. Selected as a Jackman Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow on the special theme of Food for 2012-13, she has spent the past few years conducting research on the relationship between Jews, Judaism and agriculture in the modern era, with a special focus on the contemporary Jewish food movement. She is also in the early stages of work on an ecocritical memoir, Defying Gravity, which explores narratives of women coming of age in the wake of second-wave feminism. Prof. Most is cross-listed with many interdisciplinary programs including the Centre for Jewish Studies, the Department for the Study of Religion, Centre for the Study of the United States, and the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies.

Publications

To Be (Or Not To Be): Ernst Lubitsch’s Irrepressible Theatrical Liberalism. In The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope. Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam, ed. University of Toronto Press. 2013

A Place For Us: Theatrical Liberalism and West Side Story. Shakespeare / Adaptation / Modern Drama: Essays in Honour of Jill Levenson. Randall Martin and Katherine Scheil, eds. University of Toronto Press, 2011.

The Birth of Theatrical Liberalism. In After Pluralism: Re-Imagining Models of Religious Engagement. Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen, eds. Columbia University Press, 2010. 30 pgs.

Opening the Windshield: Death of a Salesman and Theatrical Liberalism. Modern Drama 50.4 (2007): 551-573.

You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Theatre Journal 52 (2000): 307-337. Winner of the ATHE Essay in Criticism Award.

Forthcoming Publications
The Farmer’s in the Shul: The Contemporary Jewish Food Movement in North America. A Report From the Field(s). Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Vol. 28, special issue on Food. Forthcoming 2014.

Books
Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America. New York University Press, 2013.

Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical. Harvard University Press, 2004.