New York Jewish Radicalism: Political and Artistic Experiments

Tuition: $480 | YIVO members: $375**
Students: $240 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online course held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, assignments, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English.

Instructor: M. Syd Rosen

Course Description:
From the experiments of dada to the folk revival, from Abbie Hoffman and Lou Reed to Barbara Rubin and Bob Dylan, New York has been the making of some of the greatest and strangest Jewish minds of the twentieth century. Artists, organizers, agitators, and meshugenes alike have fallen under the city’s spell, but what does it mean to be a Jewish radical? Did Jewish culture radicalize New York — or was it New York that radicalized Jewish culture? This course will try to make sense of these thorny questions through an alternative artistic and political itinerary. Some of the figures we will encounter are widely celebrated, like Allen Ginsberg and Man Ray. Others are proudly marginal—grubby, shameless, and maybe even a little scary. From the highly revered to the downright weird, these varied histories will leave participants with a greater understanding of the relationship between Jewish culture and the possibilities of city life in all its messy, unsanitized beauty. Along the way we will explore a wide and challenging array of radical experiments in art and politics, drawing on readings from critical theory and fiction as well as experimental cinema, popular music, activism, and performance art.

Course Materials:
TBA

M. Syd Rosen’s writing focuses on the collision of fame, radicalism, and idealism in late-twentieth century culture and politics. He is the author of an upcoming biography of Robin Farquharson, the South African-born mathematician and anti-apartheid activist, and is currently finishing a book-length study of the garbologist A.J. Weberman. Alongside this work he is in the final year of a PhD in the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.

**Become a member today, starting at $54 for one year, and pay the member price for classes! You’ll save on tuition for this course and more on future classes and public programs tickets.