Courses

Historically, Yiddish literature and culture was produced and consumed by people who were usually bi-lingual or multi-lingual, living in societies with a different majority language. Today, when only a small number of people read Yiddish fluently, most Yiddish literature and culture is
consumed as translations or adaptations. Our course then, investigates, Yiddish literature and culture from the 20th and 21st centuries as a particularly fruitful site for thinking through questions of translation and adaptation theory by looking at writers such as I. B. Singer, and
products of popular culture such as the musical Fiddler on the Roof/Fidler afn dakh or the movie Yentl . Through these readings we will investigate questions such as: What translation strategies were necessary for the world of Yiddish-speaking Europe to enter the realm of American-Jewish
culture?