“State of the Field”

The newest installment of our annual effort to gather together the latest publications relevant to Yiddish Studies in English.

Oct 14, 2020

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

A 1921 article about Yiddish literature by Chinese scholar Mao Dun, which has served as a foundational piece for Yiddish Studies in China.

Mar 17, 2020

This piece is offers a broad portrait of the state of Yiddish Studies in China today, including its role in the small but growing field of Jewish Studies in China.

Mar 17, 2020

We are interested in pieces that place the recent events at YIVO in the context of discipline-wide trends, historical, economic, scholarly and otherwise, and that help us think through the broader forces that produced this moment and its possible ramifications. 

Feb 09, 2020

Check out the dozens of panels and presentations involving Yiddish at this year’s Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference.

Dec 04, 2019

Check out the dozens of panels and presentations involving Yiddish at this year’s Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference.

Dec 03, 2018

Check out the dozens of panels and presentations involving Yiddish at this year's AJS. 

Dec 11, 2017

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

Professor Anita Norich concludes our series of reflections on Translating Yiddish in the twenty-first century by reconsidering our relationship to ambiguity in translation. 

May 12, 2016

In geveb's Managing Editor for Translations reflects on the need and possibilities for translating the archives of Yiddish culture, in addition to the greats of its literature. 

May 10, 2016

Zackary Sholem Berger reflects upon the roundtable discussion at AJS last December that inspired this series, and on his own motivations as a translator from Yiddish and a writer in English and Yiddish. 

May 08, 2016

In the second essay in our series of reflections on translating Yiddish in the twenty-first century, Sarah Ponichtera thinks about how we can bring a sense of materiality to our translations. 

May 04, 2016

Chief Editor Saul Noam Zaritt introduces our series of essays reflecting on the state of Yiddish translation. 

May 01, 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

Was there a definable style of Yiddish writing produced in the American West? It is time to look beyond New York and examine the unique experiences of Jews on the Pacific Coast and the literary culture they produced. 

Aug 26, 2015

It seems obvious that study of the Holocaust would need to highlight Yiddish. Unfortunately though, the study of the Holocaust has often been pursued without the slightest nod to Yiddish. What is lost when Yiddish is left out? 

Aug 25, 2015

What is Yiddish Studies? We inaugurate In geveb with a symposium on the state of the field, where a cross-section of scholars identify the pressing questions of Yiddish Studies.

Aug 14, 2015

How can we read Yiddish poetry across time to find a new common language? How can we create a space for the imagined dialogues of Kadia Molodowsky and Adrienne Rich with their foremothers, an alternative narrative of blood and text? 

Aug 11, 2015

The “spatial turn” in the humanities has opened up new kinds of thinking about Jews’ relationship to place. Yet how can this approach—which focuses on the physically concrete—be applied to the field of Yiddish studies, which after all is defined by the intangible factor of language? 

Aug 10, 2015