Call for Pedagogy Submissions: Class in the Classroom

Spurred in part by recent discussions on rising Neo-Bundism among progressive young Jews, both at a YIVO panel and during a roundtable at AJS, we have been thinking more thoroughly about how “class” enters the Yiddish Studies classroom. Jewish radical politics of the early 20th century can become topical in our courses in many different ways: as background information contextualizing an author’s life, when reading non-fiction, poetry, or literary prose in the language classroom, when teaching the history of a particular movement or party, or simply because our students are particularly interested in leftist Jewish history. How, then, do we teach about Jewish labor movements or economic conditions in Jewish Eastern Europe/the United States with (or without?) an eye to our present situations? How does our teaching of historicized class experiences intersect with our students’ experiences of class that may vary wildly across institutions and programs? Especially with contingent academic labor becoming increasingly normalized, how might our class experience as instructors shape our teaching, and to what extent should we teach about or discuss with students our own experiences of class and the conditions of our labor?

We are open for submissions in various genres, such as:

• Personal essays
• Syllabi with reflections
• Exercises and classroom activities
• Worksheets
• Interviews
• etc.

Send your pitches to [email protected]