Beyond DI KLASSIKER: Amplifying the Yiddish Canon

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel will highlight newly discovered or underappreciated works in Yiddish literary history. Among the treasures under consideration are the messianic poetics of H. Leivik's DER GOYLEM (Melissa Weininger), two classic authors of Yiddish children's literature (Miriam Udel), the role of dance in the work of two vastly different authors (Sonia Golance), and a major national poem of Cuban literature--written in Yiddish (Rachel Rubinstein). As each of the presentations individually, and the work of the panel as a unit, will demonstrate, the concept of "canon" in Yiddish literature achieves its maximal value when it remains unsettled, incomplete, and still growing.

Sub Unit

• Yiddish Studies

Chair

• Marsha Dubrow, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Individual Presentations

• Failed Messiah: DER GOYLEM and the Question of Redemption - Melissa Sarah Weininger, Rice University

• Raising Red Cavalrymen and Red Greenhorns: Politics and Poetics in Yiddish Children’s Literature - Miriam Udel, Emory University

• Shared Glances and Mixed Dancing: Figuring Dance as a Literary Motif in Opatoshu and Shtok - Sonia Gollance, University of Pennsylvania

• “ ‘Mi segunda patria’: Languages and Homelands in the Yiddish HATUEY” - Rachel Rubinstein, Hampshire College