Polish-Jewish Masculinities and the Challenge of Modernity
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Book Talk
Admission: Free Registration is required. |
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jewish men in Eastern Europe lived in a social reality in which both Jewish and non-Jewish men and women tested, debated, and redesigned masculinities. Men of Valor and Anxiety by Mariusz Kalczewiak explores how religion, class divisions, antisemitism, new domesticity, and militarization changed masculine ideas and practices in Eastern Europe between the 1890s and 1930s. Kalczewiak’s study ventures into the military barracks, yeshivot study halls, fraternity parties, and Jewish homes to demonstrate how complex Jewish masculinities were between orthodoxy, acculturation, Polish and Jewish nationalisms, and changing notions of domesticity and profession. Men of Valor and Anxiety is the first book to demonstrate how the links between ethnicity and gender were constructed within both global and local contexts.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Kalczewiak about this book, led by Miriam Mora.
About the Speakers
Mariusz Kalczewiak is a Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. He is a social and cultural historian of modern Jewish history, with a focus on Latin America and Eastern Europe. His award-winning book Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture was published in 2020 with the University of Alabama Press. His second book Men of Valor and Anxiety: Polish-Jewish Masculinities and the Challenge of Modernity came out in 2025 with Indiana University Press.
Miriam Mora is a historian of American immigration and ethnic history, with a focus on Jewish American gender identity. Her areas of research interest and specialization include modern Jewish history, gender and antisemitism, genocide studies, Holocaust memory and representation in pop culture, masculinity, history of Irish conflict, and American Jewish acculturation. Her first book, Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century was released from Wayne State University Press in 2024. She previously served as Academic Director at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.