Dec 03, 2018
It’s that time of year again, when scholars and students of Jewish Studies from around the United States and the world gather to learn about each others’ research, to develop friendships and discuss shared projects, and (we hope) to chit chat in person about all the exciting material they’ve been reading on In geveb. The Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) will be held in Boston this year on December 16-18.
In geveb was launched at the AJS conference in 2013, and we’ve been an enthusiastic presence at the conference ever since. That means that while it’s the 50th anniversary of the AJS conference, it’s also an important anniversary for us - we’ve been around for five whole, and very full, years! We look forward to celebrating both milestones with our friends at the AJS conference.
For the past four years we have organized a roundtable each year approaching the question of “the state of Yiddish Studies” from different angles. These roundtables have resulted in several series of essays, including on the state of Yiddish translation and teaching Yiddish in the digital age. We are continuing the tradition this year with a roundtable on “Teaching in Translation, Teaching as Translation” (see link below). We hope you will join us for the discussion.
Our round table is only one of many papers and panels related to Yiddish that will be taking place, and we’re pleased to offer, for the second year in a row, our guide to Yiddish at the conference (if you notice something we’re missing, please email us!) We’d like to acknowledge Gahl Rinat for his work in compiling this list. We hope that you will discover, as we have, that our field is varied and fresh, full of new ideas and enriched by scholars working in a variety of positions and disciplinary backgrounds. If you are one of the presenters included here, we hope you will 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
This year we are particularly proud and grateful to be participating in the annual meeting of an organization that is committed to upholding its core ethical values. In light of a labor management dispute between the Marriott Corporation and the UNITE HERE labor organization, resulting in strikes at several Marriott hotels around the country, the AJS canceled its contract with the Marriott Sheraton in Boston for its conference and relocated to the Seaport Hotel. We’re looking forward to seeing our Yiddish studies friends and colleagues at this new location, and sharing with them a respect for the many kinds of labor that go into our conferences, including the labor of hotel workers.
Where to Find In geveb at AJS
- Teaching in Translation, Teaching as Translation Roundtable: (Sunday 10-11:30am, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Federal 2 Complex): Our roundtable this year brings together instructors who teach with texts, both literary and historical, written originally in languages other than the language of instruction. Addressing the methodologies and philosophies of teaching in translation, and teaching as an act of translation, participants will discuss pragmatic strategies for teaching texts in translation, as well as mechanisms for conveying contextual elements that require additional translation from the teacher’s knowledge to students’ frames of reference.
- In geveb “Office Hours”: In geveb editors will be holding “office hours” at the Seaport Cafe on Monday 8:00-10:00 and Tuesday 10:00-12:00. Come and talk to us about your pitches, ideas for articles you’d like to talk through, or just to chat about what you’ve read on In geveb or the field of Yiddish Studies more generally.
- Say hello!: In geveb editors and editorial board members will be wearing pins with our logo during the conference. If you see someone wearing an In geveb pin please introduce yourself!
- On Twitter: As in past years, In geveb will be live tweeting the conference. Follow us at @ingeveb to get a glimpse of the Yiddish Studies learning we’re experiencing, even if you can’t make it to the conference.
Diana Clarke (Managing Editor for the Blog), Jessica Kirzane (Editor-in-Chief) and Madeleine Cohen (Senior Editor) enjoying the AJS conference together this past December. Follow us on Instagram (@in.geveb) for more editorial selfies.
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, December 16th
10:00-11:30am
- Teaching in Translation, Teaching as Translation
- Jessica Kirzane, Chair
- Diana Clarke, Moderator
- Allison Hope Shachter
- Philip Hollander
- Sasha Senderovich
- Hannah Polin-Galay
- Rethinking Jewish “Subcultures”: Algerian, Parisian, Viennese, and Beyond
- Lisa Silverman, Chair
- Nicholas Underwood, “Jewish Subcultures and the Left in Postwar France”
- David J. Sorkin, Respondent
- Potpourri: Modern Literature, Aesthetics and Politics in Europe
- Jonathan M. Webber, Chair
- Hazel Frankel, “Unwanted Beauty: Avraham Sutzkever's Yiddish poetry and his Nuremberg Testimony”
- Ilan Fuchs, “Spiritual Socialism and Poalei Agudat Yisrael Left: An Orthodox Interpretation to Socialism”
12:30pm-2:00pm
- Gender and Genre: Power and Proscriptivism of Form in Modern Jewish Poetry and Prose
- Anita Norich, Chair
- Jessica Anne Kirzane, “Against the ‘Science’ of Free Love in Yiddish Popular Fiction”
- Shoshana Olidort, “Feminist Jewish Poetry and the Reappropriation of Form”
- Anarchist Diasporism/Diasporic Anarchism:Jewish Anti-Statism and Statelessness [Seminar - Part 1]
- Samuel Hayim Brody, Chair
- Hayyim Rothman
- Diana Clarke
- Caroline Luce
- Adi Nester
- Kenyon Zimmer
- Nina Gourianova
- Anna Elena Torres
4:15-5:45pm
- Visions of Yiddish: Toward a History of Modernist Yiddish Literature and Art
- Maya Barzilai, Chair
- Ofer Dynes, ““I am a Specialist in Displacement”: A Chapter in Yosl Bergner’s Biography, 1942-1950”
- Sunny S Yudkoff, “Painting Poetry: Jennings Tofel and the Visual Art of Di yunge”
- Samuel Spinner, “From Image to Word: Primitivist Visuality in Der Nister’s Stories”
- Transnationalism and Jewish Theatre [Roundtable]
- Nicholas Underwood, Moderator
- Joel Berkowitz
- Debra Caplan
- Sharon I Gillerman
- Diego Rotman
- Sonia Gollance
- Hassidic Literature, Media, and Secular Modernity
- Adi Mahalel, Chair
- Yitzhak Lewis, “The Talush, The Madman, and the Hassid”
- Teaching Through Film: Jewish Humor [Roundtable]
- Dalit Katz, Moderator
- Catherine Portuges
- Olga Gershenson
- Jennifer Caplan
- Tradition and Crisis Reconsidered
- Gershon D. Hundert, Chair
- Andrea Schatz, “News in Exile: The Historical Library of Eighteenth-Century European Jews”
- Israel Bartal, Respondent
Monday, December 17th
8:30-10:00am
- Graduate Student Lightning Session: Comparative Ashkenazi-Sephardi Studies
- Matthew Williams, Chair
- Anruo Bao, “Ale Mentshn Zaynen Brider: On I. L. Peretz’s ‘Pure Universality’”
- Jana Mazurkiewicz, “Creating Postwar Jewish Identity on Stage: The Case of the Yiddish Theater of Warsaw”
- Jewish name changing throughout the ages
- Sarah Bunin Benor, Chair
- Stephanie Ginensky, “The Recurring Motif of Name-Changing in Jewish Literature”
- Kirsten L. Fermaglich, Respondent
- Religion and Jewish Education in Poland, 1915-1939
- Eliyana R. Adler, Chair
- Sean Martin, “Teaching the Teachers: Preparing Instructors of Jewish Religion for Poland’s Public Schools”
- Naomi Sheindel Seidman, Respondent
10:30-12:00pm
- Post-Holocaust Yiddish Publishing and Theater
- Eitan Kensky, Chair
- Rachelle Grossman, "Anxieties of Space and Place: Geographies of Yiddish Literature in a Postwar World”
- Justin Jaron Lewis, “A New Yiddish Renaissance: Der Veker's creative writing contest”
- Karolina Koprowska, “The concept of BIRTHPLACE in post-war Yiddish literature. The case of Reyzl Zykhlinsky”
- Anna Rozenfeld, “"Tsu di Poylishe Yidn in Amerike". Binem Heller’s Dialog with the Polish Jews in America”
1:15-2:45pm
- Translation and Yiddish: New Approaches
- Anita Norich, Chair
- Naomi Sheindel Seidman, “Freud and/in Yiddish”
- Jan Schwarz, “Yitskhok Bashevis' Translations of World Literature in Interwar Warsaw”
- Jeffrey A. Grossman, “Re-Discovering the Shtetl in the German Sholem Asch and Dovid Bergelson”
- Yaakov Herskovitz, “Yiddish ≠ Jewish: The Untranslatable Between Yiddish and Hebrew”
- The city as a realm of cultural encounter and translation in Yiddish and Hebrew literature
- Rachel Seelig, Chair
- Judith Müller, “Writing Yiddish and Hebrew in a German speaking city: Berdichevsky’s cultural translations in Berlin”
- Dekel Shay Schory, “Hebrew Writers and the(ir) European city: Poetic identity, languages, and urban thought in two novels by Lea Goldberg and David Vogel”
- Shachar M. Pinsker, Respondent
- Antifascist Jews – Jewish Antifascism?
- David Shneer, Chair
- Miriam Schulz, “Fascism and the Holocaust within the Soviet Yiddish anti-Zionist campaign of the 1970s”
3:00-4:30pm
- Digital Jewish Culture: From Documentation to Interpretation
- Rachel Beth Gross, Chair
- Sarah Ponichtera, “Who is archiving the archivists?”
- Eleonore Biezunski, “Constructing the Ruth Rubin Legacy Digital Exhibit: A Critical Methodology”
- David Schlitt, “The Community Legacy Project and the Challenge of Local Narratives”
- Eitan Kensky, “Abraham Tabachnik and the Hope of Recording”
- Questioning Redemptive Narratives in Artistic Productions of the Holocaust
- James E. Young, Chair
- Anna Shternshis, “Hitler Wearing a Jewish Beard: Soviet Yiddish Humor of World War II”
- Politics and Identities on the Israeli Stage
- Assaf Shelleg, Chair
- Shelly Zer-Zion, “Acting Socialism: Political Plays in The Ohel during the 1930's”
- Transnational potentials in (American) Jewish studies and its various subfields
- Tony E. Michels, Chair
- Markus Krah, “Cultural transfer”
5:00-6:30pm
- The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures [Roundtable]
- Liliane Weissberg, Moderator
- Naomi Brenner
- Derek J. Penslar
- Bryan K. Roby
- Roy Holler
- Shachar M. Pinsker
- Matthew Handelman
- Jewish Tango and Diasporic Dancing
- Eve Jochnowitz, Chair
- Sara Feldman, “Tango and Socialism in Yiddish”
Tuesday December, 18th
8:30-10:00am
- Graduate Student Lightning Session: Jewish Cultures
- Lila Corwin Berman, Chair
- Vardit Lightstone, “Reading as Witnessing: a discussion of the emotional impact of Yiddish personal narratives of trauma”
- Madeleine Cohen, Respondent
10:15-11:45am
- Modernization and the Hasidic renaissance in interwar Poland
- Ariel Mayse, Chair
- Wojciech Tworek, “Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn’s Yiddish Writings and the Revival of Hasidic Storytelling in Interwar Chabad”
12:45-2:15pm
- Jews in the American Progressive Era; Cultural and Political Encounters in the Era of Mass Migration and Urban Reform, 1900 - 1920
- Anna Rachel Igra, Chair and Respondent
- Ayelet Brinn, “The Yiddish Press: An Americanizing Agency?"
- Jewish Women and Autobiographical Acts
- Jennifer Sartori, Chair
- Chantal Ringuet, “Urban and Picturesque : Kadya Molodowsky and Rokhl Korn's imaginary landscapes”
- Negotiating Jewish Rights Between International Ideals and National Constraints, 1848-1968
- Zohar Segev, Chair
- Michael Casper, “"Forget Versailles": From Rights to Privileges in the Illiberal Lithuanian State”
- Shifting Boundaries: Jewish Literatures [Roundtable]
- Meri-Jane Rochelson, Moderator
- Naomi Brenner
- Karen Grumberg
- Lia Nicole Brozgal
- Zohar Eeda Weiman-Kelman
2:30pm-4:00pm
- New Approaches to Yiddish Music & Writing
- Cady Vishniac, Chair
- Itzik Gottesman, “Yiddish Pogrom Ballads: Many Towns - Three Songs”
- Ellen Kellman, “The Cahan-Zhitlovsky Polemic (1910) and the Politics of Popularization”
- Sandra Nora Chiritescu, “Women’s Chains and Liberation: Sonya, the AGUNE, and Phyllis, the divorcée, in Blume Lempel’s BALADE FUN A KHOLEM”
- Eve Jochnowitz, “"The Almighty Salad": The Yiddish Press Reacts to the Promises and Threats of Vegetarianism”
- Anarchist Diasporism/Diasporic Anarchism:Jewish Anti-Statism and Statelessness [Seminar - Part 2]
- Samuel Hayim Brody, Chair
- Hayyim Rothman
- Diana Clarke
- Caroline Luce
- Adi Nester
- Kenyon Zimmer
- Nina Gourianova
- Anna Elena Torres
- Potpourri: Jewish Language, Literature, and Writing
- Renee Perelmutter, Chair.
- Yishai Neuman, “Jewish vernaculars' role in the indefiniteness of šel-governed nouns in set expressions in Modern Hebrew”
