Comparative Literary Studies|Gender Studies|Hebrew and Jewish Studies|Modern Languages and Cultures

For centuries, Yiddish was gendered as feminine. Known colloquially as mame-loshn or the mother tongue, the vernacular language of most Ashkenazi Jews was...

For centuries, Yiddish was gendered as feminine. Known colloquially as mame-loshn or the mother tongue, the vernacular language of most Ashkenazi Jews was deemed appropriate for women’s prayer and popular literature. While women (and men who were “like women” in not being literate in Hebrew and Aramaic) were the traditional Yiddish readership, the Yiddish press and Yiddish intellectual circles had a complicated relationship with women writers. Yiddish women writers faced specific challenges in both traditionalist and modernist circles, a fact frequently reflected in their use of searing imagery and radical interpretation of Jewish texts.

This module explores questions of genre, translation, and canon formation through the lens of women’s literary production in Yiddish. We will examine works in the variety of genres in which women wrote, including poetry, prose, memoir, drama, and prayer, and consider how these different genres were incorporated into Yiddish Studies feminist scholarship.

We will also explore literary criticism and reviews of these writers, including in the early 20th century Yiddish press, in order to investigate how these texts fit into a gendered and aesthetic context. We will ponder such questions as:

What are differences and continuities between Early Modern and 20th century literature or between different genres?
	What were the stakes in writing prose vs. poetic works? #
	How do these works conform to literary, aesthetic, and gendered conventions of the day?
	How do these writers convey a (feminine) response to their rapidly shifting social, geographic, and historical milieu?
	What role does the Yiddish language ––as an inner Jewish or emerging world language––play in their works?
	What is the process by which texts get canonized or translated—and how do these choices impact broader perceptions of women’s participation in Yiddish literature?
Readings and discussions are in English, with Yiddish versions available.