Jewish Stuff: Objects from the YIVO Archives

What can we learn from the stuff we keep, and how do things help us remember? How do archival objects enrich and complicate the stories we tell about the past?  

These questions will drive our discussions about a series of artifacts from YIVO’s rich collection of material culture. We will examine a range of archival items—from the small and the intimate, to the grand and the public. Participants will have a rare opportunity to encounter and handle objects from the last century or so, both precious and ordinary, including: ceremonial objects of religious observance, yizkor books, snuff boxes, kitchenware, wallets and clothing as well as hand-made art from Europe and the United States. Participants will thereby be encouraged to reflect on the meaning of objects in their own lives, and how material culture itself has evolved in the digital age. Readings will include historical documentation and background about the objects; critical texts on understanding material culture; and literary narratives that embed the meaning of the things we save within wider questions of memory, the home and Jewish identity. 

Barbara Mann is professor of cultural studies and Hebrew Literature and the Chana Kekst Professor of Jewish Literature at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Her areas of expertise include Israeli and Jewish literature, cultural studies, modern poetry, critical theory and urban studies, literary modernism, and the fine arts.

Dr. Mann is the author of Space and Place in Jewish Studies (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space (Stanford University Press, 2005), in addition to numerous scholarly articles. She is Editor Emerita of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History. Dr. Mann has lectured and presented scholarly papers at seminars and conferences in the United States, Israel, and Europe, and has been awarded numerous honors for her work. From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the faculty at Princeton University, where she also served as a faculty fellow in the Center for the Study of Religion. Her current project The Object of Jewish Literature: A Material History, is under contract with Yale University Press and has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

BA, Boston University, 1984; MA, New York University, 1986; PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1997

Publications:

• A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.
• Space and Place in Jewish Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012.

For a fuller description, information about pedagogy and course offerings, and to view and download publications, visit www.barbaramann.org.

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