The 2025 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization Celebrates YIVO’s Centennial
(New York, NY) – The 2025 YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, celebrating YIVO’s 100th anniversary, will be held this winter (January 7-24, 2025). The Program will delve into the literature, history, and culture of East European Jewry and offers a remarkable lineup of international and national presenters including historian Hasia Diner, film critic J. Hoberman, scholars and writers Sander Gilman, Jan Grabowski, Adam Kirsch, and Pulitzer-prize winner Anne Applebaum, along with instructors from leading institutions across the globe.
This year’s Winter Program celebrates YIVO’s centennial year with courses illuminating developments over the past century in Jewish music, Jewish literature, science, and more.
“We’re at a critical inflection point in Jewish history right now,” said Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s Director of Education. “The Winter Program is a forum of ideas, and YIVO's centennial is the perfect time for us to explore the key moments, issues, and works of art that have defined the past century to help us imagine a robust cultural future.”
A keynote event “Autocracies in the 21st Century” featuring writer Anne Applebaum (author of Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize) will take place on Zoom at 1:00pm ET on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. Also featured in this year’s program is a book talk with Adam Kirsch on his recent book, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice on Wednesday, January 15 at 1:00pm ET. These events will be free and open to the public, including those not enrolled in the Winter Program.
In its thirteenth year, the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization explores Ashkenazi Jewish life and culture throughout its thousand-year history in Eastern Europe and the diaspora. The program enables participants to engage with the Jewish Ashkenazi experience through history, culture, politics, and art, with courses not typically found outside of the university setting.
This year’s Program will also feature courses taught by Jonathan Brent (YIVO’s Executive Director & CEO), Hasia Diner (New York University), Sander Gilman (Emory University), Jan Grabowski (University of Ottawa), J. Hoberman (The Village Voice), Michael Lukin (Jewish Music Research Centre), Anita Norich (University of Michigan), Ilan Stavans (Amherst College), and Alex Wellerstein (Stevens Institute of Technology).
Conducted via Zoom, the 2025 Winter Program features small class sizes, allowing students to work closely with instructors from the comfort of home.
Concurrent with the Winter Program, YIVO will also run a series of Winter Yiddish seminars this January. These seminars, taught by Eve Jochnowitz (University of Michigan), Abraham Lichtenbaum (Executive Director of the Argentinian YIVO or IWO), Eugene Orenstein (McGill University), Josh Price (Yale University), Vera Szabó, Paula Teitelbaum, and Mikhl Yashinsky, will cover topics such as Yiddish literature, Yiddish theater, Ashkenazi Jewish foodways, and more.
Learn more about the Winter Program and related events at yivo.org/winter-program.
To learn more about YIVO’s Winter Yiddish courses, visit yivo.org/winter-yiddish.
For more on YIVO’s centennial celebrations and activities, visit yivo.org/centennial.
For any media inquiries please contact:
Ben Kaplan
Director of Education
YIVO
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story