Dec 11, 2017
Meeting every year in December, the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies is one of a few regular events that bring together scholars and students of Yiddish from around the United States and the world. The inaugural meeting of what soon became In geveb’s editorial board was held at the AJS conference in 2013 and every year since In geveb has been present at AJS in a number of ways. We have organized a roundtable each year approaching the question of “the state of Yiddish Studies” from different angles (see below for a link to this year’s roundtable, “Yiddish Studies Beyond Borders”). These roundtables have resulted in several series of essays, including on the state of Yiddish translation and teaching Yiddish in the digital age.
Last year for the first time we surveyed the conference program to find all of the content related to Yiddish (over 50 individual presentations and three roundtables!), and invited all those attending the conference to meet with our editors at a series of kafe shoen. This year we realized we are probably not the only ones interested in seeing that survey of all the Yiddish content happening at the conference, so we are excited to share this guide to the large number of panels, roundtables, and individual papers related to Yiddish that will be taking place (if you notice something we’re missing, please email us!). Looking at this full schedule, we can’t help but be impressed by the vitality of our field. If you are one of the presenters included here and are feeling equally proud of your Yiddish scholarship, consider submitting your work to In geveb for publication!
We also want to highlight the events In geveb has organized and is participating in, and to encourage you to use them as an opportunity to meet us. In geveb aims to be a resource for Yiddish Studies in the broadest sense, which means that if you work with Yiddish and we don’t know you yet, we want to. In geveb editors will be wearing buttons with our logo during the conference, if you see someone sporting these stylish oysyes, consider it an invitation to come introduce yourself.
How to tell if you’re talking with an editor of In geveb
Where to find In geveb at AJS
- Yiddish Studies Beyond Borders Roundtable (Sunday 3-4:30pm Gallaudet University Room): Our roundtable this year will explore the breadth of Yiddish Studies outside US institutions and English-language scholarship.
- Graduate Student Reception (Sunday 9:30pm Mint Room): Are you a graduate student interested in or working with Yiddish? We want to meet you! Several of our editors will be at the reception (wearing our In geveb buttons), please come introduce yourself and talk with us about how you can get involved with the journal.
- Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop (Monday 10-11:30am Digital Humanities Space): Our editors will present In geveb at this drop-in session, stop by for a few minutes to talk with us about In geveb as a model of digital scholarship and publishing.
Where to find Yiddish at AJS
All of the following panels, roundtables, seminars, and lightning sessions promise to have at least one speaker whose presentation engages with Yiddish in a substantive way. We include the name of these presenters and their papers. In the case of roundtables and seminars, we have included the names of all participants. Follow the links to the conference schedule for more detail.
Sunday
12:45 to 2:15pm
- The Pathologies of Jewish Literature
- Shachar Pinsker, chair
- Samuel Spinner, “Neurotic Children, Nervous Chasidim: Fishl Schneersohn’s Psychology of the Novel”
- New Perspectives in Holocaust Studies
- Jeffrey Shandler, “‘Another Holocaust’: An Analogy and its Discontents”
- Of Divided Minds: Conversion Conflicts and Identity Challenges
- Daniel Stein Kokin, “A Synagogue for Christians: Anshel Moshe/Christoph Wallich (1672-1743) and The Mayerische Synagogue in Greifswald”
3:00 to 4:30pm
- Yiddish Studies Beyond Borders [roundtable]
- Madeleine Cohen, chair
- Raphael Koenig
- Anna Kushkova
- Agi Legutko
- Yitzhak Lewis
- The Image of Paris in Post-war Jewish Literary Memory
- Sara Horowitz, “Streetwalking Paris: Yiddish Inflections in French Cityscapes”
- Constructing Identity Through the Performative Languages of Music and Theater
- Phil Alexander, “Semer Label Reloaded: music of pre-war Jewish life and the sound of contemporary Berlin”
- Reassessing Maurice Samuel [roundtable]
- Mark Dunaevsky, moderator
- Gil Ribak
- Francois Guesnet
- Judah Mark Bernstein
- Joan Friedman
- Alan Levenson
4:45 to 6:15pm
- (Il)legal Dialogues: Jews and Law in a Global Perspective post-1945
- Miriam Schulz, “‘Aykhmans ash’: Soviet Jews and Eichmann/’s Trial”
- Jewish Respectability Politics
- Naomi Sarah Taub, “An Embarrassment of Rishes: Malice/Permission in Contemporary Jewish American Literature”
In geveb’s editor Sarah Zarrow introduces our roundtable discussion on “Teaching Yiddish in the Digital Age” at the AJS in December, 2016.
Monday
8:15 to 10:00am
- Artistic and Cultural Expressions of Jewishness in Soviet Contexts [seminar pt. 1]
- Marat Grinberg, Maya Balakirsky Katz, chairs
- David Shneer
- Harriet Murav
- Elissa Bemporad
- Anna Shternshis
- Anna P. Ronell
- David E Fishman
- Polina Barskova
- Afterlives of a Zadik: Hasidic Writing and its Lingering Effects on Modern Jewish Literature [seminar pt. 1]
- Natan M. Meir, chair
- Ken Frieden
- Hannan Hever
- Yitzhak Lewis
- Eli Rubin
- Orel Ben Zion Sharp
- Sam Berrin Shonkoff
- Rose Waldman
8:30 to 10:00am
- Lightning session in Literature (Yiddish, Hebrew) and Jewish Politics
- Joshua Price, “Eyropeizirt un farbesert? Avrom Reyzen’s Eyropeyishe literatur and the “Normalization” of Yiddish Literature
- Rachelle Grossman, “Kasrilovke of Entre Ríos: Gerchunoff’s Los Gauchos Judíos Between Two Peripheral Inheritances”
- Marc Volovici, “Yiddishism, Hebraism, and the German Language”
- Works-in-Progress Group in Jewish Studies
- Saul Zaritt, “Isaac Bashevis Singer, Translation, and Ghost World Literature”
10:00 to 11:30am
- Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop
- Diana Clarke and Madeleine Cohen, “In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies”
- Stephen Jacobs, “Mordecai Marches to Manchuria”
- Jewish Women and Literary Modernity [roundtable]
- Allison Schachter, moderator
- Elizabeth Loentz
- Anita Norich
- Lisa Silverman
- Orian Zakai
- Wendy Ilene Zierler
10:30am to 12:00pm
- Yiddish Language and Yiddish Linguists
- Eddy Portnoy, chair
- Isaac Bleaman, respondent
- Itzik Gottesman, “An Analysis of Yiddish Counting-out Rhymes from the collection of Mordkhe Schaechter”
- Miriam Isaacs, “Yiddish Language Maintenance and Religion”
- Alec Burko, “What is missing in Mordkhe Schaechter’s Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary?”
- New Approaches to the Yiddish Press in the Americas
- Eric Goldstein, chair
- Ayelet Brinn, “Living Novels: The Form and Function of Advice Columns in the American Yiddish Press”
- Jessica Kirzane, “The Battle Against Free Love: Literature and Journalism about Romance in Di Varheit During World War I”
- Michael Rom, “The Torah Shall Go Forth Out of Birobidzhan: Satire and the Cold War in the Brazilian Yiddish Press, 1950-1955”
- Reading Arendt: Language, Law, Politics
- Na’ama Rokem, “Jewish Politics in all the Languages of the World”
1:15 to 2:45pm
- Straddling the Worlds of the Sacred and the Profane: Chaim Grade’s Work and Life
- Allan Nadler, chair
- Rose Waldman, “Beys Harav: A Study of Chaim Grade’s Opus”
- Yehudah DovBer Zirkind, “Chaim Grade: Confessions of a Tormented Writer”
- Justin Cammy, “Young Grade: The Vilna Years”
- Dis/locating Recent Post-Soviet Jewish American Literature
- Sandra Chiritescu, “Transgenerational Graphic Witnessing in Flying Couch and Soviet Daughter”
- Hearing Ashkenaz: What Can Klezmer Music Tell us about Jewish History?[roundtable]
- James Loeffler, moderator
- Nathaniel Deutsch
- Lyudmila Sholokhova
- Walter Feldman
3:00 to 4:30pm
- Radical Jewish Politics in the Street through Photography, Literature, and Violence
- Tony Michels, chair
- Eddy Portnoy, “Life’s a Riot with Jew Versus Jew: Intra-Jewish Violence on Yom Kippur”
- Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, “Russian Jewish Riots on the streets of New York City”
5:00 to 6:30pm
- The Jewish Palette: New Perspectives on Color Symbolism in Jewish History
- Rebekka Voss, “A Visual Kingdom in Red: The Red Jews in Early Modern Yiddish Culture”
- Iris Idelson-Shein, “Jews in the Shadow of Whiteness: Jews and the Racialization of Whiteness Around 1800”
- Yiddish Literary Legacies
- Agi Legutko, chair
- Jan Schwarz, “Salvaging a Polish-Yiddish Literary Heritage in New York, 1946”
- Meital Orr, “On the 100th Anniversary of His Death: The ‘Hasidism’ of Sholem Abramovitch and its Intersections with Dostoevsky’s ‘Old Belief’”
- Anna Elena Torres, “‘Yet Over the Edge Is a Hand With a Hand’: The Border and the Body in Peretz Markish’s Poemas”
- Contemporary Language Ideologies: Hebrew in Contact with Diaspora Languages
- Esther Jahns, “Variation in the linguistic repertoire of German Jews in contemporary Berlin - Local interpretation of a global repertoire?”
- Renee Perelmutter, “Israeli Russian vernacular as a vehicle for the negotiation of Jewish religious identities in a digital diaspora”
Tuesday
8:30 to 10:00am
- Hasidic Yiddish: Maintaining a Changing Language
- Dalit Assouline, chair
- Chaya Rachel Nove, “The Linguistic Marginalization of Hasidic Yiddish”
- Isaac Bleaman, “Variation in Hasidic Yiddish syntax: A corpus study of language change on the internet”
- Steffen Krogh, “Antwerp Yiddish in the 21st Century – a Snapshot”
- Convergences: jewblack is blackjew
- Brett Ashley Kaplan, “Reflections on the Yiddish/African-American Convergences of Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell”
- Jewish Queer Woman Bodies and (New) Materialities of Reproduction
- Ofer Dynes, chair
- Naomi Seidman, “Performing Orthodox Girlhood: Bais Yaakov Plays in Interwar Poland”
- Dory Fox, “Queer Yiddish/Heritable Yiddish: The Biological and the Bodily in Irena Klepfisz’s Bilingual Poetry”
- The Meaning of Benjamin Harshav: Investigating his Legacy in Yiddish, Hebrew and Theoretical Studies [roundtable]
- Barbara Mann, moderator
- David Roskies
- Chana Kronfeld
- Shachar Pinsker
- Barbara Harshav
- On the Move: Travel, Migration, and Modern Jewish Literatures
- Justin Cammy, chair
- Jack Kugelmass, “The Marvelous in the Work of Three Yiddish Travel Writers”
- Re/considering Religious Traditions at the Time of the Holocaust: Jewish and Christian Theological Attitudes
- Rosemary Horowitz, “Re-Imagining Genesis 12: 1 in Simkha Bunim Shayevitch’s ‘Lekh-lekho’”
10:15 to 11:45am
- Yiddish Culture in Post-Holocaust Paris, 1944-1954
- Robert Seltzer, chair
- Annette Aronowicz, respondent
- Constance Paris de Bollardiere, “Gathering and Dividing Yiddish Culture: The Anti-Communist Question in the Parisian Network of the Congress for Jewish Culture, 1946-early 1950s”
- Nick Underwood, “From Avant-garde to Art: Yiddish Theatre in Paris between 1944-49”
- Filming Anxious Memories and the Fate of the Jews
- Carol Zemel, “Remnant and Renewal: Yiddish Post-war Film in Poland”
- Rituals and Practices: New Approaches to their Meanings
- Tirzah Meacham, “When Do Popular Mystical Motifs in Private Prayers for Jewish Women in Italy Reveal the Prayers of Mystics and their Wives?”
- Jews and American Politics
- Sandra Fox, “‘We’ll Turn this Camp Right Upside Down’: Generational Tension, Politics, and Youth Power in Postwar Jewish Summer Camps”
- OTD Narratives in American Jewish Culture & Modern Jewish Thought[roundtable]
- Naomi Seidman, moderator
- Jessica Lang
- Chaya Nove
- Ezra Cappell
- Shoshana Olidort
- Matthew Williams
12:00 to 1:45pm
- “Artistic and Cultural Expressions of Jewishness in Soviet Contexts” [seminar pt. 2]
- Marat Grinberg, Maya Balakirsky Katz, chairs
- David Shneer
- Harriet Murav
- Elissa Bemporad
- Anna Shternshis
- Anna P. Ronell
- David E. Fishman
- Polina Barskova
- Afterlives of a Zadik: Hasidic Writing and its Lingering Effects on Modern Jewish Literature [seminar pt. 2]
- Natan M. Meir, chair
- Ken Frieden
- Hannan Hever
- Yitzhak Lewis
- Eli Rubin
- Orel Ben Zion Sharp
- Sam Berrin Shonkoff
- Rose Waldman
