DESCRIPTION:

Miriam Udel, author of Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature, is a Rabbi, scholar, and mother who reveals the impact of stories and poems written for Yiddish-speaking children in the early 20th century on what it means to be a Jew today.

Miriam Udel discusses what Yiddish is and how its imaginative works helped and will continue to inspire Jewish children around the world make sense of their identity, resist injustice, and dream boldly. Drawing on nearly a thousand books across continents, Udel shows how literature became a tool for cultural nationalism, gender equality, economic justice, and empathy. She will explain how early Yiddish books for children build symbolic nations without borders, instills dignity and purpose, and how it reshaped generations of Jewish life.

GUEST BIO:

Miriam Udel is Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies and associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University, where she studies the Jewish encounter with modernity. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard University. Her academic research interests include 20th-century Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish children's literature, American-Jewish literature, and genre studies. She is also the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, and Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature.

http://miriamudel.com.