Annette Rubinstein

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

Biography

Rubinstein was born on April 12, 1910, on the Lower East Side, in New York City.[1] Both of her parents, Abraham and Jean Rubinstein, were teachers.[2] Rubinstein earned her PhD from Columbia University and then became the principal of the Robert Louis Stevenson High School.[3] Rubinstein joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and remained a secret member of the Party until 1952.[4] She was also active in the American Labor Party, and served as its state vice-chairman.[5] She met American Labor Party politician Vito Marcantonio in 1934 and later worked for him as an adviser.[6] In 1958, she ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Independent-Socialist ticket.[7]

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'.[8] 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.[9]

Her papers are held in the Tamiment Library at New York University.[10]

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. ^ 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. ^ Evans, Robert (2014). Reception History, Tradition and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 183. ISBN 9780567655424.
  9. ^ Baker, Christina Looper (1996). In a Generous Spirit: A First-person Biography of Myra Page. University of Illinois Press. p. 254. ISBN 9780252065439.
  10. ^ "Annette T. Rubinstein Papers: NYU Special Collections Finding Aids". findingaids.library.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-01.