Annette Rubinstein

Rubinstein c. 1966

Annette Teta Rubinstein (April 12, 1910 – June 20, 2007) was an American Marxist educator, literary critic, and activist.

Background

Rubinstein was born on April 12, 1910, on the Lower East Side, in New York City. Both of her parents, Abraham and Jean Rubinstein, were teachers. She earned her PhD from Columbia University.

Career

Rubinstein became principal of the Robert Louis Stevenson High School.

Rubinstein joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and remained a secret member of the Party until 1952. She was also active in the American Labor Party, and served as its state vice-chairman. She met American Labor Party politician Vito Marcantonio in 1934 and later worked for him as an adviser. In 1958, she ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Independent-Socialist ticket.

Rubinstein taught in East Germany between 1960 and 1962 and served as the vice-chairman of the German-American Friendship Society, which advocated for American recognition of the German Democratic Republic.

Works

As a writer and literary critic, Rubinstein was the author of the two-volume book The Great Tradition in English Literature: From Shakespeare to Shaw, which focused "from a Marxist perspective on the relationship of political and social movements to 'major literary works'.

Rubinstein edited Marcantonio's collection of speeches, I Vote My Conscience (1956), which influenced the next generation of young radicals.

Legacy

Rubinstein's papers are held in the Tamiment Library at New York University.

References

  1. ↑ Meyer, Gerald (March 3, 2017). "Annette T. Rubinstein and Progressive Secular Jewishness". Jewish Currents. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  2. ↑ Lang, Clarence, ed. (2009). Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement: Another Side of the Story. Springer. p. 61. ISBN 9780230620742.
  3. 1 2 Castledine, Jacqueline (November 2012). Cold War Progressives: Women's Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom. University of Illinois Press. p. 115. ISBN 9780252094439.
  4. ↑ Wald, Alan M. (2012). American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War. University of North Carolina Press. p. 81. ISBN 9780807835869.
  5. ↑ Hoban, Phoebe (2010). Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. St. Martin's Press. p. 423. ISBN 9781429956765.
  6. ↑ Bell, Christopher (2013). East Harlem Remembered: Oral Histories of Community and Diversity. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. p. 63. ISBN 9780786468089.
  7. ↑ Buhle, Paul (1990). Encyclopedia of the American Left. Garland Pub. p. 502. ISBN 9781558621213.
  8. ↑ Baker, Christina Looper (1996). In a Generous Spirit: A First-person Biography of Myra Page. University of Illinois Press. p. 254. ISBN 9780252065439.
  9. ↑ Evans, Robert (2014). Reception History, Tradition and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 183. ISBN 9780567655424.
  10. ↑ "I Vote My Conscience, 2002 edition, hosted at Vito Marcantonio official website". Archived from the original on 2013-12-07. Retrieved 2013-11-01.
  11. ↑ "Annette T. Rubinstein Papers: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids". findingaids.library.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-01.