Postwar Yiddish
After a violent rupture with the past, what stories do people tell about themselves and why? Who has the authority to claim the past, and how do they mediate it?
My dissertation addresses the transformation of Yiddish literature in response to the destruction and upheaval of the Holocaust.
Analyzing the activities of Yiddish presses in the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) and in Argentina, I focus on how Yiddish cultural actors competed over the legacy of “Polish Jewry” between 1945-84.
In gathering and disseminating literature under new imprints, those at the helm of the presses in Poland and Argentina authoritatively asserted new literary centers and peripheries, wrestling over the changing contours of global Yiddish.