YIVO’s 2024 Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization to Take Place Online

(New York, NY) – The 2024 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, will be held online this winter (January 9-26, 2023). The Program will delve into the literature, history, and culture of East European Jewry and offers a diverse lineup of international presenters including poet Irena Klepfisz, historian Tony Michels, and translator Curt Leviant, along with scholars from leading institutions across the globe.

In its twelfth year, the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization explores Ashkenazi Jewish life and culture throughout its thousand-year history in Eastern Europe and the diaspora. The program enables participants to engage with the Jewish Ashkenazi experience through history, culture, politics, and art, with courses not typically found outside of the university setting.

A keynote event “Holocaust Distortion in Poland and Beyond” featuring noted historian Jan Grabowsi (author of Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland) will take on Zoom at 2:00pm ET on Monday, January 8, 2024. This event will be open to the public including those not enrolled in the Winter Program.

This year’s Winter Program will feature courses taught by Jonathan Brent (YIVO’s Executive Director & CEO), Nathaniel Deutsch (University of California, Santa Cruz), Hasia Diner (New York University), Elżbieta Janicka (co-author of Philo-Semitic Violence. Poland’s Jewish Past in New Polish Narratives and This Was Not America: A Wrangle Through Jewish-Polish-American History), Jonathan Karp (Binghamton University of the State University of New York), Samuel Kassow (Trinity College), Irena Klepfisz (Jewish lesbian poet, essayist, activist, and teacher), Curt Leviant (author of King of Yiddish and Kafka’s Son), Tony Michels (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Ilan Stavans (Amherst College).

Conducted via Zoom once again this year, the 2024 Winter Program features small class sizes, allowing students to work closely with instructors from the comfort of home.

“As our global community confronts historical shockwaves, the study of the past feels especially urgent right now,” said Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s Director of Education. “It is our hope that the 2024 Winter Program, offered entirely online, can be a space to reflect, explore, and be inspired by the most significant topics in Jewish history and culture today.”

Concurrent with the Winter Program, YIVO will also run a series of Winter Yiddish seminars this January. These seminars, taught by Malena Chinski, Dr. Eric Goldman (Yeshiva University), Eve Jochnowitz (University of Michigan), Abraham Lichtenbaum (Executive Director of the Argentinian YIVO or IWO), Vicky Ash-Shifriss, and Rose Waldman, will cover topics such as Yiddish literature, Yiddish cinema, and Yiddish translation.

Learn more about the Winter Program and related events at yivo.org/Winter-Program. To learn more about YIVO’s Winter Yiddish courses, visit yivo.org/Winter-Yiddish.

For any media inquiries please contact:
Ben Kaplan
Director of Education

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story