IN GEVEB: A Journal of Yiddish Studies

• In Event: Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop

Abstract

A born-digital publishing space, the online journal IN GEVEB provides a much needed venue for scholars of Yiddish to publish peer-reviewed articles while also offering much more than a traditional print journal. There is currently no other English-language journal for the field. Our digital format allows us to publish articles without restrictions on length in a dynamic multimedia presentation, accompanied by full-color images of any size, audio and video clips, direct links to sources, and bilingual citations. In addition to the peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and essays on the state of the field of a traditional academic journal, IN GEVEB also publishes in several other genres. New translations from Yiddish to English published in a side-by-side bilingual format, pedagogical resources for Yiddish instructors, and a blog that explores all aspects of Yiddish culture past and present and aimed at a general interest readership. The IN GEVEB website has several functions that allow us to bring together groups of material from across the journal’s different sections, presenting a group of pieces organized around a theme. IN GEVEB also boasts a robust and growing social media presence, enabling scholarly work on Yiddish to gain a much larger following than traditional academic journals.

This presentation will introduce the IN GEVEB website and the large body of material already published there. We believe that IN GEVEB’s approach to digital publishing can be a model for new online journals in Jewish Studies and in the academy at large. For instance, our presentation will highlight a new and ongoing special feature of the journal, THE MILGROYM PROJECT. IN GEVEB has partnered with the Historical Jewish Press to digitize a group of interwar Yiddish literary journals on their website, highlighting the visually stunning journal MILGROYM. IN GEVEB has commissioned translations of key articles from this journal, as well as scholarly commentary on the translations, which will be published alongside high quality scans of the original journal. We believe this project is an innovative example of digital scholarship and scholarly collaboration between organizations, scholars, and translators that should be of interest to the broader Jewish Studies community.

Author

• Madeleine Atkins Cohen, Harvard University