Yiddish Literature and Culture

Yiddish was the language of European Jewry for nearly 1,000 years, which produced a rich legacy of folklore, legend, music, drama, poetry, fiction, and film. Recently in the United States and elsewhere we have seen an effort to recuperate, recover, and even re-define this "lost world:" in the resurgence of Eastern European "klezmer" music, in the creation of the National Yiddish Book Center, in Yiddish courses on college campuses, and in "Queer Yiddish." This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the broad and rich range of Yiddish cultural production, concentrating on literature, drama, and film. We will dip into Yiddish folklore and popular culture, performance and theatre, modernism and radicalism, kitsch and high art, and reflect upon the complicated emotions of mourning, memory, sentimentality, nostalgia, political resistance, fantasy, and desire that fuel today?s Yiddish revival. No knowledge of Yiddish language is required.