Women Writers in Yiddish Literature

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: Free Watch the video

Anita Norich | Delivered in Yiddish.

In recent decades, a new generation of scholarship has shed light on literary works in Yiddish produced by women writers. This literary criticism has sought to center the voices of women in discussions of the challenges these writers faced working in a male-dominated field. Scholars Anita Norich and Karolina Szymaniak will discuss works by women Yiddish writers and their reception.

About the Speaker

Anita Norich is the Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century (2013), Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Literature in America During the Holocaust (2007), The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer (1991); and co-editor of Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (2016), Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext (2008), and Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures (1992). She translates Yiddish literature, and teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultures, Yiddish language and literature, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature.

Karolina Szymaniak is assistant professor at the Jewish Studies Department at the University of Wrocław and Research Fellow at the Jewish Historical Institute. Her research interests range across modern Yiddish literature, Polish-Jewish cultural relations, and translation studies. In addition to having taught Yiddish language and culture throughout Poland and Europe, she has also served as a consultant for the POLIN Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in Łódz. Her recent publications include Montages. Debora Vogel and the New Legend of the City and My wild goat. Anthology of women Yiddish poets (in Polish). She is also the editor of Rachel Auerbach's ghetto writings, which received the 2016 Polityka History Award.