Jewish Women and Autobiographical Acts

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Session Sponsor: Jewish Women's Archive

Abstract

In her introduction to a special issue of Prooftexts on Jewish American autobiography, Hana Wirth-Nesher notes that the Jewish American autobiographical tradition is defined by the "tension between Adamic self-invention and Jewish origins and destiny. The Jewish-American is moving both toward and away simultaneously." This panel seeks to interrogate, elaborate upon, and challenge this understanding of Jewish American autobiography by considering texts by Jewish women and drawing upon feminist literary scholarship. In the age of #MeToo, women's autobiographical narratives have taken on new urgency amidst growing awareness of the ways that women's voices have been systemically suppressed, "tainted" (in Leigh Gilmore's term) by the construction of women as unreliable witnesses to their own lives. Traversing different time periods, as well as national and linguistic borders, and focusing on various forms (from published and unpublished memoirs to poetry, correspondence, and comics), the four papers on this panel locate Jewish women's autobiographical acts at the center of discussions about American history and identity, modernism, space and place, religion, sex, grief, power, and language.

Each panelist will speak for 12-15 minutes followed by discussion and Q&A with the audience. The session will be chaired by Jennifer Sartori, editor of the Jewish Women Archive's Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Chair

• Jennifer Sartori, Jewish Women's Archive

Individual Presentations

• "A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco": Harriet Lane Levy and the Autobiographical Tradition - Lori Harrison-Kahan, Boston College

• Urban and Picturesque : Kadya Molodowsky and Rokhl Korn's imaginary landscapes - Chantal Ringuet, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

• Framing and Unframing Grief in Leela Corman's Autobiographical Comics - Tahneer Oksman, Marymount Manhattan College

• Song of Songs, as Written by a Woman: God, Sex, and the Contemporary "Off the Derech" Memoir - Karen E Skinazi, University of Bristol