Articles

Shandler’s biog­ra­phy can be read as a chron­i­cle of expand­ing notions of folk­stim­lekhkayt, from the old vos far a yid redt nisht ken yidish (what kind of [Ashke­nazi] Jew doesn’t speak Yid­dish) stan­dard to the Yid­dish being used and devel­oped by cohorts of non-native speakers.

May 21, 2021

The Rise and Fall makes strik­ing­ly clear claims about all that is wrong with the field, from its insid­erism to its uncrit­i­cal reliance on ​“cul­ture” and ​“eth­nic­i­ty.”

May 09, 2021

Newton’s book pro­vides a stir­ring call for a Jew­ish Stud­ies to come, a pro­pos­al for new forms of affil­i­a­tion, both with­in the loose bound­aries of Jew­ish Stud­ies and extend­ing out­ward to the whole of the Human­i­ties and to the uni­ver­si­ty as an insti­tu­tion. What might it mean for Yid­dish Stud­ies to par­tic­i­pate in this com­ing community?

Oct 05, 2020

Adam Zachary New­ton exam­ines the Amer­i­can Jew­ish lit­er­ary impulse to claim both white­ness and alien­ation while iden­ti­fy­ing with Black Americans. 

Jun 21, 2016

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

What is Yid­dish sci­ence and what does it have to say about the postmodern? 

Mar 13, 2016

What is the future of Yid­dish schol­ar­ship? An argu­ment for the poten­tial inno­v­a­tive role for Yid­dish stud­ies with­in the human­i­ties in general.

Dec 07, 2015

Mikhail Kru­tikov calls for the revival the intel­lec­tu­al rela­tions, coor­di­na­tion, and exchange between the dif­fer­ent cor­ners of Yid­dish Studies.

Dec 06, 2015

Is there Yid­dish pho­tog­ra­phy? Can non-lin­guis­tic things be Yid­dish? Yid­dish pho­tog­ra­phy (or cul­ture in gen­er­al) might emerge not in any work of art, but in the peo­ple who pro­duced it, read it, viewed it, bought it, sold it, and exhib­it­ed it.

Sep 01, 2015

Was Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture of the ear­ly mod­ern peri­od an out­let for the voic­es of women, or did it par­tic­i­pate in their sup­pres­sion, like the iron tongue of the Rothen­burg Schand­maske?

Aug 30, 2015