Annette Rubinstein Explained

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 an 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]

Notes and References

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