February 29 - March 2, 2020 | UNCW - Presented by the UNCW Department of History and supported by the Charles and Hannah Block Fund - UNC Wilmington
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
February 29 - March 2, 2020 | UNCW Presented by the UNCW Department of History and supported by the Charles and Hannah Block Fund
No Respect: Jewish Humor
Around The World
Saturday, February 29 – Monday, March 2, 2020
The University of North Carolina Wilmington
Department of History
With the support of the Charles and Hannah Block Fund and the
Rhine Family Endowment for Jewish Studies
1
Conference Information Conference at a Glance
All panels will be held in the Fisher Student Center Building on Saturday, February 29
UNCW’s campus.
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. Opening Reception (by invitation only)
Sunday, March 1, 9:00 a.m.-7:30 p.m.
Monday, March 2, 9:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sunday, March 1
8:15 a.m. Shuttle Leaves Embassy Suites
Special Events 9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks FSC 2017
9:15 -10:45 a.m. Panel 1 FSC 2017
Saturday, February 29 10:45 -11:00 a.m. Coffee Break FSC 2017
Welcome Reception (by invitation only) 11:00 -12:30 p.m. Panel 2 FSC 2017
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. 12:30 -1:45 p.m. Lunch FUU 2001 AB
The Embassy Suites by Hilton 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Panel 3 FSC 2017
9 Estell Lee Pl, Wilmington, NC 28401 4:00 - 5:45 p.m. Keynote FSC 2017
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. Reception FSC 2000
Sunday, March 1 7:30 p.m. Shuttle Leaves UNCW
Keynote Lecture and Concert
4:00 - 5:45 p.m. Monday, March 2
Wrightsville Beach Room (FSC 2017)
601 S College Rd, Wilmington, NC 28403 8:15 a.m. Shuttle Leaves Embassy Suites
Reception following keynote presentation (by invitation only) 9:00 -10:30 a.m. Panel 4 FSC 2017
10:30 -10:45 a.m. Coffee Break FSC 2017
10:45 -12:15 p.m. Panel 5 FSC 2017
12:15 p.m. Closing Remarks FSC 2017
12:30 p.m. Boxed Lunches FSC 2000
2 3
Sunday, March 1 8:15 a.m. Shuttle leaves Embassay Suites 12:30 -1:45 p.m. Lunch in Azalea Coast Room
Sunday, March 1
A&B (FUU 2001 AB)
9:00 a.m. Opening Remarks in the
Wrightsville Beach Room (FSC 2017) 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Panel 3 FSC 2017
9:15 - 10:45 a.m. Panel 1 FSC 2017 Panel 3: Jewish Humor in Popular Media
• Chair: David Houpt (University of North Carolina Wilmington)
Panel 1: Jewish Humor - Foundational Texts • Lauren Brooks (High Point University): No Disrespect: Kafka and
• Chair: Matthew Poirier (Univeristy of North Carolina Wilmington) the Soup Nazis
• Leonard Greenspoon (Creighton University): It’s Funny and It’s in • Marat Grinberg (Reed College): The Travails of Being a Soviet
Tanach. But — Is Biblical Humor Jewish? Jewish Comedian: Michael Idov’s The Humorist (2019)
• Mark Leuchter (Temple University): Is Mel Brooks Also Among • Ber Kotlerman (Bar Ilan University): Sholem Aleichem and
the Prophets? Charlie Chaplin: Translating Yiddish Humor into the Language of
• Louis Kaplan (University of Toronto): Jewish Joke 1911/2019: Early Cinema
From Alexander Moszkowski’s Jüdische Witz to Erez Israeli’s • Grace Overbeke (Duke University): Jean Carroll and the
Holocaust Humor Negotiation of Jewish Femininity
For full panelist information, please view the “Presenter Biographies”
section. 4:00 - 5:45 p.m. Keynote Lecture + Concert
FSC 2017
10:45 -11:00 a.m. Coffee Break FSC 2017
Laughing Against Fascism: Soviet Yiddish Songs of
11:00 -12:30 p.m. Panel 2 FSC 2017 World War II
Presented by Psoy Korolenko (Musician) and Anna
Panel 2: Jewish Humor in Literature Shternshis (University of Toronto)
• Chair: Rebecca Mullins (University of North Carolina Wilmington)
• Jarrod Tanny (University of North Carolina Wilmington): Is There a
Montreal Jewish Humor? The Case of Mordecai Richler 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. Reception (by invitation only)
• Ruth von Bernuth (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): Clocktower Lounge (FSC 2000)
Laughter as Cure: Hershele Ostropolyer in Mezhibizh
• Steve Weinberg (Rutgers University): Transcending Slapstick: How
7:30 p.m. Shuttle leaves UNCW
Kafka Metamorphosed the Gesture in Silent Film and Yiddish
Theater to Forge a New Humor of the Absurd
4 5
Monday, March 2 8:15 a.m. Shuttle leaves Embassay Suites Presenter Biographies
9:00 - 10:30 a.m. Panel 4 FSC 2017 Lawrence Baron
Panel 4: Humor and the Holocaust - Europe Professor Emeritus Lawrence Baron held the Nasatir Chair of Modern
• Chair: Michael Seidman (University of North Carolina Jewish History at San Diego State University from 1988 until 2012 and
Wilmington) directed its Jewish Studies Program until 2006.
• Ilana McQuinn (Davidson College): The Tragi-Comic and the He received his Ph.D. in modern European
Grotesque: Holocaust Humor as a Historical Phenomenon in cultural and intellectual history from the
Communist Czechoslovakia University of Wisconsin in 1974. He taught
• Bradley Fritch (University of Central Oklahoma): Humor in at St. Lawrence University from 1975 until
Hell: How Jewish Comedians Continued Their Performances in 1988. He has authored and edited four books
Theresienstadt including The Modern Jewish Experience in World
• Lawrence Baron (San Diego State University): Dani Levy and the Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011) and
Return of Jewish Film Comedy to Reunified Germany Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The
• Ashley Passmore (Texas A&M University): Holocaust “Camp”: Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust
Excess as Resistance in the Third Generation in Germany Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005). He served as the historian and as an
interviewer for Sam and Pearl Oliner’s The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews
in Nazi Europe. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly political satire
10:30 -10:45 a.m. Coffee Break FSC 2017 column for the on-line newspaper, the San Diego Jewish World.
10:45 -12:15 p.m. Panel 5 FSC 2017
Panel 5: Humor and the Holocaust - Israel Lauren Brooks
• Chair: Venkat Dhulipala (University of North Carolina
Wilmington) Lauren J. Brooks is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at High Point
• Avinoam Patt (University of Connecticut): Laughing Off the University in North Carolina, where she has been tasked to create a
Trauma of (Jewish) History: The Jews are Coming German minor program. She earned her PhD in German in 2018 from
• Liat Steir-Livny (The Open University): The Satiric Critique in the Pennsylvania State University, her MEd
Israel of the Trips to the Former Concentration Camps in Curriculum and Instruction in 2018 from
Bloomsburg University, and her MA in German
12:15 p.m. Closing Remarks FSC 2017 in 2012 from California State University Long
Beach. Her research interests include Franz
Kafka, Jewish humor in American popular
12:30 p.m. Boxed Lunches FSC 2000 culture, the German Novella, project-based
assessment, and foreign language pedagogy.
6 7
Jennifer Caplan published by the Jewish Publication Society, is the first book-length work on
this topic. He has been actively involved in three translation projects and has
Jennifer Caplan is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of
served as a consultant to the American Bible Society and the Museum of the
Jewish Studies at Towson University. As a scholar of American Judaism and
Bible. His work with younger scholars was highlighted in a Festschrift in his
popular culture her research covers a variety of
honor. He was also similarly honored at a session, Wisdom of the Ages, at
topics including humor, gender, graphic novels,
the 2019 SBL/AAR national meeting.
comic books, and other forms of popular media.
Recent publications include the January, 2020
issue of The Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Marat Grinberg
which was a special issue on the TV show Crazy
Ex-Girlfriend she edited and contributed to, Marat Grinberg is Associate Professor of Russian and Humanities at Reed
and a chapter in Laughter After: Humor and the College in Portland, OR. His academic interests range broadly from Soviet
Holocaust (available April, 2020) about Lenny poetry to global Jewish cinema. He has published
Bruce, Woody Allen, and Jewish masculinity. Her extensively on these topics in both scholarly and
book, All Joking Aside: American Jewish Humor from The Borscht Belt to Broad intellectual journalistic venues. He is the author
City is forthcoming with Wayne State University Press. of the first study of Boris Slutsky’s poetics, “I’m
to Be Read not from Left to Right, but in Jewish:
Bradley Fritch from Right to Left”: The Poetics of Boris Slutsky, the
Bradley Fritch attended the University of Russian translation of which is forthcoming in
Oklahoma where he specialized in Judaic the new Contemporary Western Rusistika series
studies during his time there. Following his next year. Grinberg’s latest book is Aleksandr
time at OU, he went on to the University of Askoldov: The Commissar (2016), the first
Central Oklahoma to pursue a Master of Arts monograph study of the great banned Soviet
in Museum Studies. He intends to graduate Jewish film. His current book project is Reading between the Lines: The Soviet
December 2020 while continuing to focus on Jewish Bookshelf and Post-Holocaust Soviet Jewish Identity and Culture, which
Jewish history throughout his studies. investigates the idea of Soviet Jewishness through what and how the Soviet
Jews read.
Leonard Greenspoon Louis Kaplan
Since 1995, Leonard Greenspoon has held the Klutznick Chair in Jewish
Louis Kaplan is Professor of Art History and Visual Studies and an affiliated
Civilization at Creighton University. Before teaching at Creighton, Greenspoon
faculty member at the Centre for Jewish
served for 20 years on the faculty of Clemson
Studies at the University of Toronto. He is
University. Greenspoon has published or
the author of several books, the most recent
edited 32 books, in addition to numerous
being Photography and Humour (Reaktion
articles, substantive encyclopedia entries, and
Books, 2017). His next book At Wit’s End:
book reviews. Among these are publications
The Deadly Discourse on the Jewish Joke
on Jewish humor, biblical humor, the Bible in
covers the period from the Weimar Republic
popular culture, and Judaism in popular culture.
through the Holocaust (and beyond) and
His study on Jewish Bible translations, being
it will be published by Fordham University
8 9
Press in May. He began this project as a post-doctoral fellow at the Franz The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity,
Rosenzweig Center for German-Jewish Cultural History and Literature at the was published by Oxford University Press in
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and he completed it while a Visiting Scholar 2017 and he currently serves as the executive
at the Center for Jewish History in New York two decades later. Kaplan secretary of the Canadian Society of Biblical
also has collaborated with the artist Melissa Shiff on two highly acclaimed Studies. When not professing, he makes fuzz
research-creation projects supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities pedals for guitarists you’ve probably listened to
Research Council of Canada under the rubric of Imaginary Jewish Homelands. at some point and holds national championship
These projects utilize the emergent media of augmented reality and virtual titles and state records in competitive
reality in pursuit of counterfactual Jewish histories (Mapping Ararat and Virtual powerlifting. His favorite band is Rush.
Kimberley).
Ber Kotlerman Ilana McQuinn
Dov Ber Kotlerman is the Sznajderman Chair in the Study of Hasidism and Ilana McQuinn is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Davidson College, where
Yiddish Culture and Associate Professor at the Department of Literature she teaches European and Jewish History. She completed her PhD at the
of the Jewish People, Bar Ilan University. Since University of Chicago in August 2019. Her dissertation “The Rise and Fall of
2012, he also served as scholar-in-residence Jewish Representation and Communist Reform
or visiting professor at the Yeshiva University, in Czechoslovakia, 1945-75” examines the
Kokushikan University in Tokyo, the University of emergence in 1960s Czechoslovakia of hundreds
Cape Town, and Vytautas Magnus University in of new literary, cinematic, and theatrical works
Kaunas, Lithuania. He is the author of a number focusing on the experiences of Jews in Eastern
of monographs in the field of Yiddish culture, Europe. Initially driven by Jewish authors, this
among them Broken Heart / Broken Wholeness: movement increasingly involved the participation
The Post-Holocaust Plea for Jewish Reconstruction of non-Jewish writers, filmmakers, theater
of the Soviet Yiddish Writer Der Nister (Boston, producers, and illustrators. Her paper “The
MA: Academic Studies Press, 2017) and Disenchanted Tailor in “Illusion”: Sholem Tragi-Comic and the Grotesque: Holocaust
Aleichem behind the Scenes of Early Jewish Cinema, 1913-16 (Bloomington, IN: Humor as a Historical Phenomenon in Communist Czechoslovakia” examines
Slavica Publishers, 2014). a subsection of these works, which emerged primarily in the late 1960s. Her
research has been generously funded by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the
Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, the University of Chicago History and
Slavic Departments, among others.
Mark Leuchter
Mark Leuchter (PhD, University of Toronto, 2003) is Professor of Ancient
Judaism and Hebrew Bible in the Department of Religion at Temple University
in Philadelphia. His primary research is on the formation of the priesthood
in ancient Israel, the role of myth in prophetic literature, and cultural memory
in ancient Jewish historiography of the Persian period. His latest monograph,
10 11
Grace Overbeke Avinoam Patt
Grace Kessler Overbeke works at the intersection of Jewish Studies, Comedy Avinoam J. Patt, Ph.D. is the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies
Studies, and Theatre Studies. Dr. Overbeke received her MA and PhD from and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish
Northwestern University’s Interdisciplinary Life at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Finding Home
Theatre and Drama program, where she and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the
wrote her dissertation on the life and work of Aftermath of the Holocaust (2009); co-editor of
Jean Carroll, the first Jewish female stand-up a collected volume on Jewish Displaced Persons,
comedian. She received her BA in Theatre and titled We are Here: New Approaches to the Study
English at Wesleyan University. She is currently of Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany
serving as the Perilman Postdoctoral Fellow in (2010); and is a contributor to several projects
Jewish Studies for 2019-2020 at Duke University. at the USHMM including Jewish Responses to
In the fall of 2020, she will begin a tenure-track Persecution, 1938-1940 (2011). He is co-editor
position in the Comedy Studies program of of an anthology of contemporary American
the Theatre Department of Columbia College Chicago. She has published in Jewish fiction entitled The New Diaspora: The
Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Studies in American Humor, Theatre Annual, the Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (2015) and of a new volume on
New England Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and The Jewish Forward. In addition The Joint Distribution Committee at 100: A Century of Humanitarianism (2019).
to being a scholar of theatre; she is also a practicing dramaturg and director. He is currently writing a new book on the early postwar memory of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, co-editor of a forthcoming volume Laughter After:
Humor and the Holocaust (2020), and together with Laura Hilton, is co-editor
of a new volume on Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust (2020).
Ashley Passmore
Ashley Passmore is an Assistant Professor of German and International Studies
at Texas A&M University. Her current book project, “Jews and Space: Jewish
Belonging in the Third Generation” looks at contemporary literature, theater
and visual art of German, Austrian and Israeli Jews and their revaluation
Liat Steir-Livny
of diaspora and national adherence in a transnational context. Her article, Liat Steir-Livny is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Department
“Transit and Transfer: Between Germany and Israel in the Granddaughters’ of Cultural Studies, Creation and Production at Sapir College, and a tutor
Generation,” appeared this year in the Palgrave and course coordinator for the Cultural Studies MA program and the
Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture, Department of Literature, Language, and the Arts at the Open University
edited by Victoria Aarons and Phyllis Lasser. of Israel. Her research focuses on the changing commemoration of the
A recent article on “Teaching the Arab Israeli Holocaust in Israel from the 1940s until the
Conflict as a Critical Thinking (Dis)course,” was present. She has authored numerous articles
included in the book, Teaching the Arab-Israeli and five books. In 2019 she won The Young
Conflict (Wayne State, 2019), edited by Rachel Scholar Award given jointly by the Association
Harris. This spring, her article, “The Sephardic for Israel Studies (AIS) and the Israel Institute.
Turn in German Jewish Studies” will appear in Website: www.liatsteirlivny.com
the Journal of Jewish Identities.
12 13
Jarrod Tanny Steve Weinberg
Jarrod Tanny is Associate Professor of History and the Charles and Hannah Steve is a third-year PhD student in the German Department at Rutgers
Block Distinguished Scholar in Jewish History at the University of North University. Prior to attending Rutgers, Steve completed an M.A. in Literature
Carolina Wilmington. Between 2008 and 2010 at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His M.A.
he was the Schusterman post-Doctoral Fellow Thesis was on Franz Kafka’s novel Der Prozess
in Jewish Studies at Ohio University. He received and its connection to a crisis in jurisprudence
his Ph.D. from the University of California at occurring in Central Europe at the turn of the
Berkeley, focusing on Russian and Jewish history. twentieth century. His research interests are
Originally from Montreal, Canada, he completed Kafka, German-Jewish studies, law, humor, and
an M.A. at the University of Toronto and a B.A. Nietzsche. He has presented his research into
at McGill University. His monograph, City of Kafka, absurd humor, and Judaism, in Berlin,
Rogues and Schnorrers (Indiana University Press, Heidelberg, and Moscow. Steve also received a
2011), examines how the city of Odessa was J.D. from Temple University in 2012 and spent
mythologized as a Jewish city of sin, celebrated and vilified for its Jewish two years practicing law in an insurance defense firm in Philadelphia. This
gangsters, pimps, bawdy musicians, and comedians. He has published essays summer he will be on DAAD fellowship in Berlin to conduct a series of
on Jesus and Christianity in Jewish comedy, Jewish humor in the Bible Belt, interviews on Susan Neiman’s latest book, Learning from the Germans: Race
Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He is currently working on a larger study and the Memory of Evil.
on Jewish humor in post-World War II America and its place within the larger
context of the European Jewish past. He has also written numerous op-eds
on antisemitism that have appeared in The Forward, Tablet Magazine, The Times
of Israel, The Jewish Journal, and The Jewish Review of Books.
Ruth von Bernuth
Since 2008, Ruth von Bernuth has taught Medieval and Early Modern German
and Yiddish literature and culture in the Department of Germanic and Slavic
Languages and Literatures of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
where she is also the director of the Carolina
Center for Jewish Studies. For a research project
on Yiddish literature she was awarded a visiting
fellowship in Jewish Studies from Yad Hanadiv
and Beracha Foundation in Israel in 2011/12.
Her most recent book, How the Wise Men Got to
Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition
(New York University Press, 2016), examines the
multiple ways in which the Jewish story tradition
of the “Wise Men of Chelm” came into being.
15
14
Our Keynote Presenters Keynote Biographies
Laughing against Fascism: Soviet Yiddish Jokes and Songs of World
War II Pavel Lion, a.k.a. Psoy Korolenko, is one of Russia’s most popular – and
clever – songwriters, as well as a pre-eminent Yiddish singer, songwriter and
Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Psoy Korolenko (Moscow - New York) scholar. Self-referred to as a ‘’wandering scholar’’ and an ‘’avant-bard’’, he is
and historian Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto) bring to life long lost known for his multilingual one-person cabaret-esque shows, which balance
Yiddish songs of World War II in this all-new concert and lecture program, folk and klezmer music, free-style poetry and intellectual comedy. Psoy writes
entitled Laughing Against Hitler: and sings in English, Russian, Yiddish, and French. On stage since 2000, he
Yiddish Humor During WWII in has published one book of selected essays and song lyrics, ‘’The Hit Of The
the Soviet Union. Can humor be a Century’’, and 14 CDs – some of them in collaboration with active Jewish and
weapon? If yes, is it effective? Based Klezmer musicians (“Opa!”, Daniel Kahn, Igor Krutogolov, “Oy Division”). Psoy
on Yiddish jokes and anecdotes is a member of the organizing committee for a Russian American music festival
recorded between 1943 and 1945, JetLAG, a guest of many klezmer music festivals, and an ex-artist in residence
the program tells the story of what at the Trinity College (Hartford), The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor),
Jews found funny, and why, as they Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA). An author of insightful and sophisticated
lived through the darkest period of Russian sung poetry, Psoy is also known for his keen and explorative vision of
modern Jewish history in Europe. the art of translation, “tradaptation” and what he calls Spell-Art (i.e. playing
with foreign text, emphasizing linguistic distances, multilingual songs etc).
None of the jokes and songs, all
presented in Yiddish complete with Anna Shternshis holds the position of Al and Malka Green Professor of
English and Russian translations, was Yiddish studies and the Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish
known until they were accidentally Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her doctoral degree (D.Phil)
discovered in the basement of the in Modern Languages and Literatures from Oxford University in 2001.
Ukrainian National Library in the Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet
1990s. Union, 1923 - 1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) and When
Sonia Met Boris: Oral history of Jewish Life in Under Stalin (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017). Shternshis is a co-editor-in-chief of East European
Jewish Affairs.
Awards
Grammy Nomination for the Best Album in World Music, 2019
“Fiddler on the Roof ” prize as the Cultural Event of the Year of the
Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, Moscow, Kremlin, 2019
16 17Acknowledgements
SAVE THE DATE With gratitude we would like to thank all those who helped make
this conference possible: the donors to the Charles and Hannah
Block Fund, especially Frank Block, as well as the Rhine Endowment;
UNCW’s Department of History and its Chair, Lynn Mollenauer
Nineteenth Annual as well as the Towson University Department of Philosophy and
Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture Religious Studies; Meaghan Wright and Andrea Massey; Amélie
Brogden; Ann Seymour; Jeanne Persuit and the Department of
Communication Studies student production team (Austin Chandler,
CHANGING WORLD Hannah Lewis, Luccas Souza Cruz, and Maddie Peterson); Embassy
ORDER
Suites by Hilton Wilmington Riverfront; and, of course, our paper
and keynote presenters who made the trip to Wilmington to share
their research.
Free and Open to All
Jennifer Caplan and Jarrod Tanny
October 14th, 2020
Warwick Ballroom
UNCW
Presented by the UNCW Department of History
18 19You can also read
