YIVO winter courses cover tyranny, poetry and children’s literature
Image by Yivo Institute for Jewish Research
By Forverts Staff December 23, 2020
Read this article in Yiddish
For the ninth consecutive year the YIVO Institute will hold a series of intensive winter courses with Bard College. Unlike the annual YIVO summer program, which focuses nearly exclusively on Yiddish language and culture, the “Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization” includes a wider range of topics.
This year, the program is more expressly political than usual. As the YIVO Institute explained in a press release, it is responding to the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world by having historians teach courses about tyranny.
Timothy Snyder (Yale University), a renowned expert on fascism, will teach the course, “Tyranny and Freedom” explaining how the history of the Jews in the 20th century can be understood in light of the rise of today’s tyrannical regimes.
Jonathan Brent, the CEO of the YIVO Institute and an expert on Russian history, will teach the class “Stalin and Power” which explores how Stalin’s emergence as a dictator is portrayed in literature.
Richard Ovenden, the chief librarian of Oxford University, will teach a class on the purposeful destruction of libraries and archives throughout history.
On the literary front, Miriam Udel (Emory University) will teach a class on Yiddish children’s literature, highlighting how authors’ political and artistic motivations reflect the Jewish response to modernity.
Anita Norich (Michigan University) will teach the course, “Yiddish Politics and Poetics”, exploring how American-Yiddish poets like David Edelstadt, Malka Lee, Jacob Glatstein and Dora Teitelbaum reacted to labor disputes, protests, race relations and the growing divisions between American and world Jewry.
Ilan Stavans (Amherst College), an expert in Latin-American literature and an author and playwright in Yiddish, Spanish and English, will teach a class on Jorge Luis Borges’ philo-semitism. Participants will read excerpts from his work in class in order to see how Jewish themes are reflected in his writings.
The “Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization” runs from January 5-22. Participants can register until December 28.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
