Nov 30, 2022
AJS Conference Imagery: “Back Bay Bossa Nova,” Copyright © 2014 Paula Ogier.
INTRODUCTION
It’s that time of year again: the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies is quickly approaching! Although In geveb is an online journal that prides itself in convening virtual conversations in and around our published pieces throughout the year, we look forward to having an occasion to gather in person and share space with one another. This year, the conference will take place in Boston from December 18 to 20.
While we are very much looking forward to this opportunity to discuss shared projects and new ideas with those who will be in Boston, we are committed to continuing to maintain lines of communication with the many friends and colleagues who are unable to attend the conference due to COVID concerns and other travel challenges. Our intention is that this guide to Yiddish at AJS will make it easier to forge connections among scholars whose work contributes to Yiddish studies, whether that connecting takes place at the conference this year or in other forms at other times.
Where to find In geveb at the AJS Conference
This year, In geveb will be sponsoring a roundtable discussion on Yiddish pedagogy. On Sunday, December 18, from 2:30 to 4:00 pm, the roundtable “Vos iz? Yiddish Pedagogy in the 21st-century Academia” will take place in the Exeter Room (Third Floor, Sheraton Boston). This conversation will present an opportunity to reflect on the changes in Yiddish pedagogy over the last hundred years, to discuss current practices, and to lay out expectations and hopes for the future. Our very own editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane will serve as moderator; Ellen Kellman, Beatrice Lang, Agi Legutko, Elena Luchina, and Sara Feldman will participate as discussants.
We’d love to meet you! Look for the In geveb editors on Sunday, December 18, from 8:30 to 10 am at Blue Bottle Coffee. This is an opportunity to gather and to chat informally about all things Yiddish studies. Feel free to bring ideas about what you might want to contribute to In geveb, tell us about your favorite pieces from the site, suggest what you would want to see more of from the journal, or just say hi! We are looking forward to getting to know more of our readers and, of course, having more of our readers get to know one another. If you can’t make it to have coffee with us on Sunday morning, we hope that you will find In geveb editorial staff and board members during the conference and introduce yourselves to us.
If you will not be at the AJS Conference but would like to connect with our editors, please write to [email protected] to schedule virtual office hours with us.
Where to find Yiddish at the AJS Conference
This is the In geveb guide to Yiddish at the conference. All the following panels, roundtables, seminars, and lightning sessions plan to have at least one speaker whose presentation engages with Yiddish in a substantive way. We include the names of these presenters and their papers, and in the case of sessions fully devoted to Yiddish topics we include the chairs and respondents. For roundtables and seminars, we have included the names of all participants. Please follow the links to the conference schedule for more details. Since plans may change as the conference draws near, please note that this is current as of the publication date of the blog post. If you notice that something is missing or incorrect, please write to us.
Saturday, December 17
7:30 pm
Although it’s not officially part of the AJS conference, if you are in town early you can catch a presentation by Vivi Lachs on her book London Yiddishtown, which will be hosted by the Boston Workers Circle. The event will be held at the Boston Workers Circle building, 6 Webster St. Brookline, MA.
Sunday, December 18
10:00 - 11:30 am
Chair: Anna Elena Torres
David Kurkovskiy, “Provincializing Berlin from Soviet Belarus: Kulbak’s Childe Harold of Dzisna, World Literature, and Socialist Jewish Modernity”
Annabel Cohen, “‘The First Defenders of the Spanish Republic’: Jewish German and Polish Communists in Barcelona at the Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War”
Anne-Christin Klotz, “More than Class War: Yiddish Travelogues from Nazi Germany and Their Influence on the Bundist Understanding of National Socialism and Antisemitism (1933-1938)”
Zakhor at 40: Jewish Memory, History, Literature
Moderator: David N. Myers
Ofer Dynes
Yael Halevi-Wise
Anna Shternshis
Shachar M. Pinsker
Shai Zamir
Omer Waldman, “The Hidden Road to On Wise Roads: Avot Yeshurun’s Translations of Yiddish Poetry”
Hasidism in Light of Postcolonial Diaspora Theory
Glenn Davis Dynner, “Polish Hasidism as a ‘Culture of Resistance’”
Word, Body, and Imagination in the Warsaw Ghetto: New Approaches to the Ringelblum Archive
Chair: Samuel Kassow
Katarzyna Person, “Women’s Experience of the Holocaust in the Contents of the Ringelblum Archive”
Hannah Pollin-Galay, “The Sensation of Words in the Warsaw Ghetto”
Sven-Erik Rose, “Zelman Skalov’s Attempt to Novelize Jewish Warsaw, September 1939-June 1941 in Real Time: Catastrophic Contingency and Novelistic Discourse”
Respondent: David G. Roskies
Early Modern Women Writers and Yiddish Literary History
Moderator: Jordan R. Katz
Rachel Greenblatt
Sonia Gollance
Matthew Johnson
12:30 - 2:00 pm
Jewish Responses to Pogroms in Early 20th Century Eastern Europe
Chair: Zelijka Oparnica
Artur Markowski, “Three Strategies for Jewish Self-Defense in Russia at the Turn of the Century”
Harriet Murav, “Hefker: The Literature of Abandonment and the Russian Civil War”
Jan Rybak, “Protecting Communities, Envisioning Autonomy: Responses to the 1918 Pogroms in Galicia”
Respondent: Elissa Bemporad
Poetry, Music, and Emotions in the Holocaust
Julia Ellen Moineau Riegel, “‘All of These People Want to Live’: Inequality, Protest, and Beggars’ Songs in the Warsaw Ghetto”
Anna Rozenfeld, “‘A Yidish Kind’: Holocaust Poetry and Yiddish Songs by Khane Kheytin-Weinstein”
Amy Simon, “The Deepening Darkness: Emotions in Yiddish Holocaust Diaries”
Maria Ferenc, “Messengers from Hell: Escapees from Treblinka in the Warsaw Ghetto”
Popular Literature and Modern Jewish Cultures
Moderator: David Mazower
Saul N. Zaritt
Yahel Matalon
Naomi Brenner
Devin Naar
Marina Mayorski
Works-in-Progress Group in Jewish Studies
Sam Shuman, “The Spectrality of Antwerp’s ‘Diamond Jews’ in Everyday Hasidic Life”
Jewish Corpus Linguistics and Language Documentation
Isaac L. Bleaman and Chaya R. Nove, “The Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe: A New Resource for Language Research and Pedagogy”
Non-Jews in Yiddish Literature
Chair: maeera shreiber
Vivi Lachs, “The Fictional ‘Goy’ in the Anglo-Yiddish Press”
Miriam Schwartz, “When Hitler Spoke Yiddish: Translation and Identity in Di yidishe melukhe, oder, Vaytsman der Tsveyter by Aaron Zeitlin”
Julian A. Levinson, “Who is the Righteous Gentile in Yiddish Holocaust Narrative?: Isaiah Spiegel’s Flamen fun der erd and the Ambivalent Representation of Polish Catholicism”
2:30 - 4:00 pm
Vos iz? Yiddish Pedagogy in the 21st-century Academia
Moderator: Jessica Anne Kirzane
Ellen Kellman
Beatrice Lang
Agi Legutko
Elena Lucina
Sara Feldman
Israel Bartal, “Kasrilevke in Petach Tikva: Was the Yishuv an Extension of the Pale of Settlement?”
Kenneth B. Moss, “‘To bring the Jewish child out of his narrow world?’: Globality, the Post-Traditional Child, and the New Jewish Children’s Literature”
Yiddish Transmissions: Electricity, Sound, Translation
Alona Bach, “Current Events: Electric Light in Transnational Yiddish Print Culture, 1880-1939”
Miriam Borden, “Kinder yorn: Ruth Rubin’s Yiddish Children’s Songs”
Yaakov Herskovitz, “‘No One Will Read my Mother’s Letters’: Reverse Engineering the Poetry of Avot Yeshurun”
German and Yiddish Literary Voices
Evan Goldstein, “‘Fun keynem nit gehert’: Nothing in and after Anna Margolin”
Jacqueline Krass, “An Uncivilized Tongue: Yiddish and Asian American Ethnopoetics”
Viral Judaisms: Reenvisioning Jewish Identity in the COVID-19 Pandemic
Heather L. Munro, “Hallucinations of Hasidic Jews in London COVID-19 ICUs”
Zackary Berger, “What Is Required for a Defense of Traditional Haredi Activity in the Context of COVID-19”
Celebrations and Commemorations through Music: Dancing and Crying in Uganda, New York, and Terezin
Uri Schreter, “Real Jewish Music”: Weddings, Klezmer, and Israeli Folk Song in Postwar New York City”
Activism, Allyship, Appropriation, Erasure: Representing Others in North American Jewish Literature
Vardit Lightstone, “ ‘Somewhere near [Inuit] Country’: Representations of Indigenous North American Peoples in Yiddish Migrant Writings from the Early Twentieth Century”
4:15 - 5:45 pm
The Yiddish Archive: Migrations and Transformations
Chair: Marc Caplan
Deborah Yalen, “The Global Migration of a Manuscript: ‘Jewish Proverbs and Sayings about Food’”
Philip Schwartz, “Soviet Yiddish Philology at Ufa/Kyiv, 1942-1948: A Yiddish Institution in a Time of Crisis”
Christina Crowder, “Using Digital Humanities to Connect the Yiddish Archive to Contemporary Community: The Klezmer Archive Project”
Respondent: Cecile E. Kuznitz
Gender, Age, and Spaces of (Jewish) Alterity in Twentieth-Century Germany
Julie Sharff, “Demons in Berlin: Ritual Transformation and Kosher Hotels in Ester Singer Kreitman’s Der sheydim tants”
Theater Responds to the Holocaust, in Yiddish and in Hebrew
Jonah Greene, “‘The Power of This Acting Business’: Post-World War II Amateur Theatre and Performance at Yiddish Summer Camps”
Monday, December 19
8:30 - 10:00 am
Yiddish Print Culture Beyond Words
Chair: Naomi E. Lindstrom
Sarah Ellen Zarrow, “The Visual Idiom of Youthful Engagement”
Magdalena Kozłowska, “Universal Language of Food? On Contacts between Polish and North African Jews in Interwar Period”
Rachelle Grossman, “Dirty Slugs and Flimsy Paper: What Can a Page Teach US about Yiddish Printing in Postwar Poland?”
Respondent: Jodi Eichler-Levine
Moderator: Jeffrey Veidlinger
Eli Rosenblatt
Amy Kerner
Harriet Murav
Nick Underwood
Rachel Rubinstein
New Jewish Neighborhoods in the Early Twentieth Century: Class, Gender and Community
Cecile E. Kuznitz, “Building Home and Community in Warsaw: The Apartment Complexes of the Wawelberg Foundation for Affordable Housing”
Ruthie Kaplan, “Unraveling the Fringes: Jewish Middle-Class Urban Space in Interwar Łódź”
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Into the Woods: Ecocriticism in Life and Literature
Betzalel Strauss, “The Ecology of Immigration: Rikuda Potash’s Nature Writing”
“Mayn yidisher pronom iz…” Reflections on Queer Yiddish Language Pedagogy
Moderator: Carolyn Elizabeth Beard
Rebecca Araten
Alona Bach
Sonia Bloom
Chloe Li Piazza
Sophia Shoulson
Samantha “Shuli” Zerin
remarks: Sasha Berenstein
1:15 - 2:45 pm
Postwar Yiddish Paris: Politics and Culture
Chair: Joel Berkowitz
Respondent: David Mazower
Nick Underwood, “The Yiddish Zionism of Post-Holocaust France”
Sonia Gollance, “Tea Arciszewska’s Miryeml (1958/59) and Her Life in Paris
Opera, Cantors, and Yiddish Language Culture
Chair: Judah M. Cohen
Daniela Smolov Levy, “Opera Everywhere: Joseph Winogradoff and Overlapping Cultural Spheres in Early Twentieth-Century America”
Danielle Roman, “Defining the Nation(s): Jewish Musical Life, Operatic Engagement, and Self-Fashioning in Ireland, 1900-1940”
Samantha Madison Cooper, “Madame Opera Meets Miss East Side: Caricaturing American Jewish Opera Encounters in New York’s Early Twentieth-Century Yiddish Press”
3:00 - 4:30 pm
Moderator: Rachel Rubinstein
Sunny S. Yudkoff
Samuel Spinner
Barry Trachtenberg
Rachelle Grossman
At the Intersections: Respectability, Race, and Gender
Gil Ribak, “Who is More Respectable? Ayzik Meir Dik’s Conceptions of Civility and Race in Di vistenay Zahara (The Desolate Sahara)”
Beyond Measure: Jewish Women’s Biography and the Appraisal of Worth
Jessica Anne Kirzane, “Miriam Karpilove and the Yiddish Middlebrow”
5:00 - 6:30 pm
The Yiddish Press Beyond Its Pages: Encounters and Confrontations between Readers and Writers
Chair: Zackary Berger
Ayelet Brinn, “‘The Spoken Bintel’: Readers in the Offices of American Newspapers”
Samuel Glauber-Zimra, “A Supernatural Bintel brief: B. Rivkin, Interpreter of Dreams”
William Marshall Pimlott, “Violence at the Doors of the Newspaper Office: Confrontations and Labour Struggle in and outside of the Global Yiddish Press”
Respondent: Kenneth B. Moss
Jewish Women on International Screens: Soviet Film, Bollywood, and American Sitcom
Shirelle Maya Doughty, “Yiddish Cinema and the Marketplace of Desire”
The Radical, the Revolutionary, and the Russian
Daniel B. Schwartz, “The ‘Red Rabbi’: Abraham Bick and the Rise of Yiddish Religious Revolutionary Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s”
Women, Revolution, and European Jewish Modernity
Chair and Respondent: Nancy Sinkoff
Elissa Bemporad, “The Making of a Political Persona: The Words and Deeds of Ester Frumkin in the Wake of the First Russian Revolution”
Samuel Spinner, “Malke Ovshyani and the Beginnings of the Holocaust Memoir”
Allison Hope Schachter, “The Revolutionary Politics of Yiddish Modernism: The Case of Debora Vogel”
Tuesday, December 20
8:30 - 10:00 am
Jews Fighting Europe’s Wars, 1914-1939
Lauren B. Strauss, “How Do You Say ‘¡No Pasarán!’ in Yiddish? American Jews and the Spanish Civil War”
Creating Modern Jewish Culture(s) through Translations and Anthologies
Moderator: Kathryn A. Hellerstein
Maya Barzilai
Judith Müller
Anita Norich
Jan Schwartz
Markus Krah
Chivalric Literature in Yiddish - in the Early Modern Era and Beyond
Chair and Respondent: Marion Aptroot
Claudia Rosenzweig, “When Tannhäuser Spoke Yiddish: On a German Legend and a Story on Blood Libels in the Mayse-bukh”
Oren Cohen Roman, “Reading Shmuel-bukh in the 21st Century”
Aya Elyada, “From German to Yiddish and Back: Old Yiddish Chivalric Texts in 19th Century German-Jewish Scholarship”
10:15 - 11:45 am
Place and Space in Holocaust Testimony
Chair: Monika Rice
Miriam Schulz, “Testimony and Place in the Wartime Soviet Union: Migrating Knowledge in Soviet Yiddish Antifascism”
Natalia Aleksiun, “Pages of Jewish History as a Testimony: The Making of Bleter far geszichte”
Eliyana Adler, “Aftermapping: Memory Maps as Holocaust Testimony”
Respondent: Yechiel Weizman
The Changing Role of Archives in the Digital World: New Directions in Public History
Karolina Ziulkoski, “Engaging Young Audiences Online with Archival Artifacts: The Experience of the Beba Epstein Exhibition”
Grief at the Borderlands: Life and Literature
Moderator: Agi Legutko
Debra Caplan
Irena Klepfisz
Tahneer Oksman
