Kubrick’s Jewesses Onscreen and Offscreen

This article considers the Jewess in relation to the art of Stanley Kubrick. By utilizing the latest insights in the emerging field of Kubrick Studies, namely the “new historical turn” that is based on exploiting material now deposited in his archive at the University of Arts, London, combined with the growing work on Kubrick’s Jewishness and on Kubrick and feminism, it argues for a reconsideration of Kubrick's working practices with regards to Jewish women but also that the notion of the Jewess helps us to understand Kubrick’s work. In so doing, it expands our notion of the Jewess beyond explicit representation thus widening the current boundaries within Jewish film studies. It will attempt to do so by combining a survey of those Jewish women with whom Kubrick worked before analyzing the Jewesses in both his realized and unrealized projects, in particular how his casting choices, among other factors, leave palimpsestic traces in his films and hence permitting us the possibility of reading those Jewish actresses as Jewesses onscreen.