[Live on Zoom] Yiddish Children’s Literature and Jewish Modernity

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: Free Registration is required. Watch the video

Miriam Udel | Delivered in English.

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Scholars are only beginning to consider the corpus of nearly one thousand extant books, as well as several periodicals, that constitute the Yiddish children’s literature of the 20th century. However, this body of work was important in both shaping and reflecting key aspects of the modern Jewish experience. We will explore what it means to limn the contours of a canon of Yiddish kidlit and discuss the unique vantage point that studying children’s literature and culture affords with respect to the rest of modern Jewish civilization.

About the Speaker

Miriam Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Jewish Studies at Emory University, where her teaching focuses on Yiddish language, literature, and culture. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, as well as a PhD in Comparative Literature from the same institution. She was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox rabbinate.

Udel’s academic research interests include 20th-century Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish children’s literature, and American-Jewish literature. She is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, will appear with New York University Press in October, 2020.