Why We Translate Yiddish Women Writers

We will discuss the effects of the marginalization of women’s writing and the kinds of work we are doing to address the inequity: archival and bibliographic work to recover the literature and make it accessible; teaching, speaking, writing, and of course, translating to bring these works to global audiences. This literature constantly surprises by its attention to sexual equality, survival in times of extremity, and countering patriarchy. We seek to put the example of Yiddish literature into the broader contexts of current trends in literary translation and attention to women writers across languages—especially other stateless, diasporic, and minor languages.

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Moderator

Madeleine Cohen is Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA). Her work includes directing a fellowship program for emerging Yiddish literary translators and publishing and promoting Yiddish literature in translation. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Presenters

Ellen Cassedy is the translator of On the Landing: Stories of Yenta Mash and co-translator, with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, of Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel, which received the 2019 MLA’s Leviant Prize. She is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust. www.ellencassedy.com. Jessica Kirzane is Assistant Instructional Professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago and Editor in Chief of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. She is the translator of Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle against Free Love by Miriam Karpilove. Anita Norich is Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the translator of A Jewish Refugee in New York, a Yiddish novel by Kadya Molodovsky. She is also the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century.