Skip to Content

Search: {{$root.lsaSearchQuery.q}}, Page {{$root.page}}

"How the Soviet Jew Was Made"

Sasha Senderovich, University of Colorado Boulder
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
4:00-5:30 PM
2022 Thayer 202 S. Thayer Map
This lecture explores how scenes of encounter between Russian Jews and Jews from the United States and elsewhere in the West have been depicted in literary fiction and journalism from the Cold War to the present day. Examining texts written during the Soviet Jewry Movement by Jewish writers visiting the USSR from abroad alongside texts by contemporary émigré Jewish writers from the Soviet Union in America, this lecture posits the "Soviet Jew" as a product of inter-cultural imagination that has been deployed as a concept in political-cultural activism and literary satire alike.

Sasha Senderovich is an Assistant Professor of Russian Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. His published work includes articles on Russian Jewish writers David Bergelson and Isaac Babel, a critical introduction and notes to the English-language translation of Moyshe Kulbak's Soviet Yiddish novel The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga (Yale University Press, 2013), as well as on contemporary fiction by Russian Jewish émigré authors in the United States. In collaboration with Harriet Murav, he translated David Bergelson's Soviet Yiddish novel Judgment, forthcoming with the translators' critical introduction and notes from Northwestern University Press (2017). He has also written on Russian Jewish literature and culture for The New Republic, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tablet Magazine, The Jewish Daily Forward, and The New Yorker's Page-turner blog.

Image courtesy of Julia Alekseyeva, Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution

If you have a disability that requires a reasonable accommodation, contact the Judaic Studies office at 734-763-9047 at least two weeks prior to the event.
Building: 202 S. Thayer
Website:
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Jewish Studies, Lecture, Talk
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Judaic Studies