Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements Feb. 25, 2011
To minimize wear and tear on the untershames, three requests: 1. Send time-sensitive notices well in advance. 2. Send material as plain text: no HTML, other coding, or attachments;and write MENDELE PERSONALS in the subject line. 3. Correspond directly with the person who or organization which has posted the notice, *not* with your ever-beleaguered untershames. _______________________________________________________ Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:53:41 GMT From: [email protected] 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 [email protected]. _______________________________________________________________________ Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct your mail as follows: Material for Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements, i.e. announcements of events, commercial publications, requests to which responses should be sent exclusively to the request's author, etc., always in plain text (no HTML or the like) to: victor.bers at yale.edu (in the subject line write Mendele Personal) Material for postings to Mendele Yiddish literature and language,i.e.inquiries and comments of a non-commercial or publicity nature: mendele at mailman.yale.edu IMPORTANT: Please include your full name as you would like it to appear in your posting. No posting will appear without its author's name. Submissions to regular Mendele should not include personal email addresses, as responses will be posted for all to read. They must also include the author's name as you would like it to appear. In order to spare the shamosim time and effort, we request that contributors adhere, when applicable, as closely as possible to standard English punctuation, grammar, etc. and to the YIVO rules of transliteration into Latin letters. A guide to Romanization can be found at this site: http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275 All other messages should be sent to the shamosim at this address: mendele at mailman.yale.edu Mendele on the web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/ To join or leave the list: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/mendele _______________________________________________ Mendele mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/mendele
