Shtetl/Miasteczko

What is the relationship between the real world and the world that is depicted by a work of art? This course looks at how literary space interacts with real, mappable places by examining the “Polish market town” known as the shtetl in Yiddish or miasteczko in Polish. While shtetl and miasteczko are sometimes used interchangeably (they both mean “town”), these terms have come to represent different things in distinct contexts. Depictions of the shtetl/miasteczko have shaped how many imagine the Jewish past in Eastern Europe, as these small Eastern European urban centers were historically marked by a high percentage of Jewish inhabitants. Many of these places still exist, though different people live there now. In this course, we will explore the intersection of the real and the imaginary shtetl/miasteczko in literature, film, art, and music, with particular attention to themes of ethnography, nostalgia, mourning, salvage, and re-invention.