[Mendele] Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements--Critical Essays on Yiddish Women Writers, Call for papers

Victor Bers victor.bers at yale.edu
Fri Feb 25 11:07:22 EST 2011


Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements

Feb. 25, 2011

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Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:53:41 GMT
From: horowitzr at appstate.edu
Subject: CFP: Critical Essays on Yiddish Women Writers


  At the start of the twentieth century, writings by women regularly 
appeared in Yiddish magazines, newspapers, and books. In 1939, Shmuel 
Niger took stock of the state of Yiddish literature and noted the 
increasing importance of women writers. Specifically, he mentioned Ezra 
Korman's anthology Yidishe dikhterins, a volume published in Chicago in 
1928. Tragically, the annihilation of Jews in Eastern European Jews during 
the 1940s and in the Soviet Union during the 1950s decimated the Yiddish 
literary community and its readers. Then in 1953, when anthologies of 
Yiddish literature in English translation started to appear, those volumes 
primarily contained the work of male writers. That was the norm until 
1980, when influenced by feminist scholars and activists, Norma Fain Pratt 
published the groundbreaking essay "Culture and Radical Politics: Yiddish 
Women Writers, 1890-1940" in the journal American Jewish History. 
Following that, in 1986, Irina Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz issued 
a call for translations of the work of women Yiddish writers. Around the 
same time, works by Yiddish women writers were the subject of increasing 
scholarly attention. Currently, translations of short stories and poems by 
women may be found in such magazines as the Pakn-Treyger and Bridges. 
Translations of several novels are also available now. An example is 
Deborah by Esther Singer Kreitman. A few anthologies of translations have 
been published as well, including Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish 
Women Writers and Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women 
Writers. Regarding scholarship, critical essays appear scattered 
throughout numerous periodicals, including Modern Language Quarterly and 
Canadian Jewish Studies. However, there is still no collection of 
criticism focusing on Yiddish women writers in print. The proposed volume 
will help fill the gap in the scholarship. Toward that end, I am seeking 
proposals for essays on the work of women who wrote in Yiddish. Essays 
that deal with any literary genre from any theoretical perspective are 
welcome. Essays should be in English.

Please send a 250-300 word abstract by March 1, 2011 to 
horowitzr at appstate.edu.
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