The Future of Yiddish Studies

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The future of Yiddish studies is under debate! At the 2009 AJS conference, a panel discussed the institutional future of Yiddish at American universities; a 2012 panel celebrated the new collection, “Choosing Yiddish,” and the rise of Yiddish scholarship within other disciplines. Yet neither panel – nor those at other academic conferences or colloquia – have focused on the future of Yiddish studies itself: its boundaries, its methodologies, and its horizons.

This roundtable asks its participants to imagine a new Yiddish studies. What approaches would they bring to Yiddish? What projects or subjects can scholars no longer ignore? With what tools should new scholarship approach these topics? What are the new strategies and pedagogies for teaching Yiddish? How can language pedagogy be better integrated into the study of Yiddish culture and literature? By addressing these questions, the participants in this roundtable, from a range of institutional and academic contexts, will present new avenues for research and scholarship that seek to reconceptualize the field.

Ofer Dynes will challenge the tendency toward Jewish exclusivity in Yiddish Studies, pointing to the vast archives of non-Jews who participated in Yiddish literary networks. Zohar Weiman Kelman will ask how Yiddish Studies and queer theory can be bridged in a way that does not simply use Yiddish as the illustration of an already established theory but rather constructs new modes of thinking from the unique circumstances of Yiddish. Eitan Kensky will address the lack of scholarship regarding the hinterlands of American Yiddish culture, asking how our view of the field changes when we look beyond New York City. Asya Vaisman Schulman will focus on new trends in Yiddish language pedagogy, particularly the integration of new technologies into the Yiddish classroom. The session’s moderator, Saul Zaritt, studies how Yiddish writers negotiate their place in world literature; he will aim to guide the conversation toward exploring how Yiddish Studies, in all of its iterations and manifestations, can create its own global networks.

Sub Unit

• Yiddish Studies

Moderator

• Eitan Kensky, Harvard University

Discussants

• Ester-Basya Vaisman Schulman, Hampshire College; Yiddish Book Center

• Eitan Kensky, Harvard University

• Ofer Dynes, Harvard University

• Zohar Eeda Weiman-Kelman, University of Toronto

• Saul Zaritt, The Jewish Theological Seminary