![]() This image of the city can be extended to Nadir’s own language, an elastic Yiddish that negotiated Jewish and the non-Jewish worlds. ![]() In the 1932 “The Ford Factories,” Nadir describes Detroit as a fluid and even rubbery city that takes in and spits out factory workers according to its needs. In her opening remarks, Maya Barzilai examined the critical viewpoint of a New York based Jewish writer, Isaac Moyshe Nadir (1885-1943), upon his visit to Detroit and its factories. The participants in the seminar, hailing from Midwestern institutions, presented their research on Yiddish writers in urban contexts such as Detroit or Chicago, while also asking how might we reassess the landscape of Jewish American culture in view of these newly discussed materials? What contributions did Midwestern artists or those who observed this region make within the field of Yiddish letters? What role did translation and multilingualism play in Jewish writing about Midwestern society and how can we translate twentieth-century Yiddish literature for a contemporary audience? This seminar spotlighted the Midwest as an interconnected region where Jewish writing and art flourished, addressing pressing social and political issues: urban sprawl, industrialization and worker exploitation, gender and racial inequalities. The study of modern Jewish cultural production in the United States has focused on the East and West coasts, particularly on the “center” of New York city. Drawing on Yiddish poetry, prose, journalism, and letters, the participants used these texts as a springboard for discussions of midwestern Jewish publishing, cultural and pedagogical institutions, and political activism. The first Mellon-Sawyer seminar in the Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest series took place on February 4-5, 2021. The seminar focused on twentieth century Jewish immigrants who wrote in and about the American Midwest. Seminar 1 coordinator: U-M Professor Maya Barzilai (Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Comparative Literature) ![]()
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