[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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