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Mini course by Edna Nahshon “From Dybbuk to Ghetto: Major Plays from the Jewish Dramatic Canon”

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Published on Tuesday, 16 May 2017 17:30

National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, MA in Jewish Studies Program • Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies • Jewish Theological Seminary of America

invite to a mini course by Edna Nahshon 

“From Dybbuk to Ghetto: Major Plays from the Jewish Dramatic Canon”

The course will expose students to Jewish dramatic literature. The plays selected come from pre-revolutionary Russia, the United States, and Israel, and were originally written in Yiddish, English, and Hebrew. They represent different styles and genres, including folkloristic mysticism, family melodrama, and thesis plays, and engage with themes that are relevant to this day: mystic yearnings, inter-generational tensions, moral quandaries, sexual mores, trauma and memory. They offer a vista of traditional Jewish life in the late 19th century, engage with the Jewish mass immigration to America and the many dilemmas triggered by it, and finally, confront the horrible ethical ambiguities presented by the Holocaust.

Edna Nahshon is Professor of Jewish Theater and Drama at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. Dr. Nahshon’s specialty is the intersection of Jewishness, theater, and performance, a topic on which she has written extensively. In 2016, she curated a major exhibition titled “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway” at the Museum of the City of New York. Her most recent book is Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to the Merchant of Venice (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Other books include Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context (2012), Jewish Theatre: A Global View (2009), Jews and Shoes (2008), From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill’s Jewish Plays (2005), and Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925–1940 (1998).

The mini course will take place on

Monday May 22 13:30

Tuesday May 23 11:40

Wednesday May 24 11:40, 13:30

Thursday May 25 11:40

To receive a reader for the course, please send a request at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/447795842235365/

Venue: Office of the NaUKMA Jewish Studies programs

Kyiv, Voloska St. 8/5, building 5, basement