The Independent Scholar

Welcome to Volume 11 of The Independent Scholar, much of which has to do with the sense of self, in its many permutations.. This volume features four critical essays, plus a reprint of the 2024 Eisenstein Essay Prize-winning essay, and an impressive book review section; these demonstrate the diversity of the membership of NCIS and its Partner Groups through the variety of topics discussed.

The issue begins with the 2025 Elizabeth Eisenstein award-winning paper, Susan R. Breitzer’s “Sisterhood was Limited: Jews, Intersectionality, and the Second Wave Feminist Movement.” Following Breitzer is Kathryn Burrows with “The Simulacrum of Mental Illness, the DSM, and Madness.” in which the author looks at the forms and effects of the definitions employed in the Diagnostic Symptoms Manual (DSM) to demonstrate how these definitions have been used to reify and create that which they purport to describe. In “Edith Stein: Not a Self-Hating Jew,” Ilana Maymind discusses the complicated history of a Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and ended in Auschwitz, where her birth determined her death. Anthony Casamasssima, in “Musician Roulette: A Reflexive Analysis of Capital, Class, and Creative Survival,” employs sociological theory in tracing the course of a musical career, as he interrogates various forms of capital (emotional, economic, social, etc.). We end where we began: with an Elizabeth Eisenstein Award prize-winner, this time for 2024 -   Mary Ann Irwin’s “‘Women with Hearts’ and the Americanization of Jewish San Francisco, 1850-1880.”

The book review section has even more variety, with no fewer than 15 reviews. We always give book authors the opportunity to respond to reviews, and we thank those who have chosen to do so as this makes for a livelier publication;  The Independent Scholar is committed to lively, respectful discussion.