Gender and the American Yiddish Press
with Ayelet Brinn, Ellie Kellman, and Jessica Kirzane
Thursday, April 25, 5pm
Franke Institute for the Humanities,
Regenstein S102
1100 E. 57th St.
Or register for Zoom
Between the 1880s and 1920s, Yiddish-language newspapers rose from obscurity to become successful institutions integral to American Jewish life. During this period, Yiddish-speaking immigrants came to view newspapers as indispensable parts of their daily lives.
In A Revolution in Type, Ayelet Brinn argues that women were central to the emergence of the Yiddish press as a powerful, influential force in American Jewish culture. The seemingly peripheral status of women’s columns and other newspaper features supposedly aimed at a female audience―but in reality, read with great interest by male and female readers alike―meant that editors and publishers often used these articles as testing grounds for the types of content their newspapers should encompass.
In A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories, Jessica Kirzane translates and presents the work of Miriam Karpilove, a prolific Yiddish newspaper writer whose writing lampoons the working conditions of women in the Yiddish press.
Ellie Kellman, a scholar of the Yiddish periodical press, will lead a discussion with Brinn and Kirzane about their recent work.
If you cannot attend in person, you can watch this event on Zoom. Register here.
Sponsored by the Sarah (Bunny) and Leo Horvitz Memorial Lectureship Fund of the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, with additional support from the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Germanic Studies, and the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture.