Articles
Essays and peer-reviewed scholarship in Yiddish Studies, an interdisciplinary field that engages all aspects of Yiddish cultural production, especially in its relationship to other cultures and languages.
Click here for a separate listing of open-access, peer-reviewed articles.
Article
My Mom Drank Ink: The “Little Negro” and the Performance of Race in Yente Telebende’s Stage Productions
The case study of Yente Telebende is merely one example of popular Yiddish culture — theater, pulp fiction, and newspapers — that strove for commercial success by appealing to the tastes of its audience, shaped by American culture’s vocabulary and images of Blackness.
Apr 21, 2023
Article
Af der shvel un in der fremd: A feuilleton on Yiddish, Race, and the American Literary Imagination
Adam Zachary Newton examines the American Jewish literary impulse to claim both whiteness and alienation while identifying with Black Americans.
Jun 21, 2016
Article
Beyond the Color Line: Jews, Blacks, and the American Racial Imagination
NYU Doctoral Candidate Jennifer Young explores the complicated ways in which American Jews claimed whiteness while examining and often identifying with Black American struggles.
Jun 21, 2016