Towards a Yiddish Architecture

Workers Circle/Dr. Emanuel Patt Visiting Professor in Eastern European Jewish Studies

While Jews once comprised a sizable element of most East European cities, they were never the dominant culture. How did they assert their presence in the urban landscape despite their lack of political power? In this talk, Cecile Kuznitz (Bard College) looks beyond synagogues and examines institutional and residential architecture created by Yiddish-speaking Jews in Poland and their émigré communities in the United States, and explores the role of the built environment in constructing a modern Jewish culture in the Diaspora.

About the Speaker

Cecile Kuznitz is Associate Professor of Jewish history and Director of Jewish Studies at Bard College. She received her Ph.D. in modern Jewish history from Stanford University and previously taught at Georgetown University. She has held fellowships at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In summer 2013 she was a Visiting Scholar at Vilnius University. She is the author of several articles on the history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Jewish community of Vilna, and the field of Yiddish Studies. Her book on Yiddish scholarship between the two World Wars, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge University Press), was released in 2014.