MODERN YIDDISH LITERATURE: THE WORLD OF EAST EUROPEAN JEWS
Prof. Sasha Senderovich -- please email with any questions: senderov@uw.edu
https://sashasenderovich.weebly.com/
This course examines modern Yiddish literature from its origins in the Russian Empire's western borderlands (today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania) to its responses to ruptures of the twentieth century: world wars, revolutions, and the Holocaust. Written in the diasporic and stateless language of East European Jews, Yiddish literature deals with migration (including to the United States, Argentina, Israel/Palestine, among other places), ethnic violence, challenges to religious customs, gender norms, sexualities, challenges of modernity, and the experience of mass violence and genocide.
All readings are in English translation; no knowledge of Yiddish is required.
This course has several listings: SLAVIC 340, JEW ST 340, GLITS 313 A -- please enroll in any section that suits your needs, it's all the same course.
A frame from the film The Dybbuk (dir. by Michał Waszyński, Poland, 1937) based on the Yiddish play of the same name by S. An-sky (1920). The protagonist Leah dancing at her wedding with a wedding guest dressed up as Death. (Yes, we will study this in class!)