Urban Yiddish Culture: The Urban Imagination in Yiddish Culture from Warsaw to Buenos Aires

This course offers a panoramic view of Yiddish culture in the twentieth century through a focus on the diverse cities inhabited by its audiences and creators across Europe and the Americas. Each week we will encounter a new city through the eyes of a novelist or poet, filmmaker, musician or visual artist. As we proceed from the turn of the twentieth century to the post-Holocaust era, we will consider the broad aesthetic and ideological tendencies that inform representations of urban Jewish life in Yiddish, English, Spanish and other languages while also charting an ever-expanding geography including Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. All material in English.