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As significant economic, social, political, and cultural transformations swept the Jewish population of Tsarist Russia and Congress Poland between 1860 and 1914, the Yiddish language (Zhargon) began to gain recognition as a central part of the Jewish cultural stage. Yiddish Transformed examines the secular reading habits of East-European Jews as the Jewish community began shifting to a modern society. Author Nathan Cohen explores Jewish reading practices alongside the rise of Yiddish by delving into publishing policies of Yiddish books and newspapers, popular literary genres of the time, the development of Jewish public libraries, as well as personal reflections of reading experiences.
This history of the generation of Polish literati born at the end of the 19th century tells of the young avant-gardists of the early 1920's who become the radical Marxists of the late 1920's. It traces the journey through futurist manifestos, Nazi genocide and Stalinist terror from literary cafes to prison cells.
Polish Jewish Culture beyond the Capital: Centering the Periphery is a path-breaking exploration of the diversity and vitality of urban Jewish identity and culture in Polish lands from the second half of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Second World War (1899–1939). In this multidisciplinary essay collection, a cohort of international scholars provides an integrated history of the arts and humanities in Poland by illuminating the complex roles Jews in urban centers other than Warsaw played in the creation of Polish and Polish Jewish culture. Each essay presents readers with the extraordinary production and consumption of culture by Polish Jews in literature, film, cabaret, theater, the visual arts, architecture, and music. They show how this process was defined by a reciprocal cultural exchange that flourished between cities at the periphery—from Lwów and Wilno to Kraków and Łódź—and international centers like Warsaw, thereby illuminating the place of Polish Jews within urban European cultures. Companion website (https://polishjewishmusic.iu.edu)
Nation of Bookworms takes an in-depth look at the reading culture of the Czech Republic--the country with the highest number of libraries per capita worldwide. Drawing on studies and oral interviews of Czech readers conducted by the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Institute of Czech Literature between 2007 and 2018, the book presents intriguing new research on Czech readership and society. Jiří Trávníček deftly sifts through hard data and first-person reportage, illuminating the myriad components that make up reading culture, such as print-reading, screen-reading, libraries, book sales, the social lives of readers, time spent reading, and reading preferences. Trávníček also takes a global look at literary love, exploring the parallels between the reading cultures of other countries and the Czechs’ unique fervor for the written word. Nation of Bookworms is essential reading for bibliophiles on every continent.
Holmgren examines how capitalism in turn-of-the-century Russia and the Kingdom of Poland affected the elitist culture of literature, publishing, book markets, and readership. Holmgren also draws parallels with and assesses recent literary and publishing developments in Russia and Poland, shedding light on the current book market and the literature of Eastern Europe as a whole. In this ground-breaking book, Beth Holmgren examines how—in turn-of-the-century Russia and its subject, the Kingdom of Poland—capitalism affected the elitist culture of literature, publishing, book markets, and readership. Rewriting Capitalism considers how both "serious" writers and producers of consumer culture coped with the drastic power shift from "serious" literature to market-driven literature.
Author Magdalena Waligorska offers not only a documentation of the klezmer revival in two of its European headquarters (Kraków and Berlin), but also an analysis of the Jewish / non-Jewish encounter it generates.
From Struwwelpeter to Peter Rabbit, from Alice to Bilbo—this collection of essays shows how the classics of children’s literature have been transformed across languages, genres, and diverse media forms. This book argues that translation regularly involves transmediation—the telling of a story across media and vice versa—and that transmediation is a specific form of translation. Beyond the classic examples, the book also takes the reader on a worldwide tour, and examines, among other things, the role of Soviet science fiction in North Korea, the ethical uses of Lego Star Wars in a Brazilian context, and the history of Latin translation in children’s literature. Bringing together scholars from more than a dozen countries and language backgrounds, these cross-disciplinary essays focus on regularly overlooked transmediation practices and terminology, such as book cover art, trans-sensory storytelling, écart, enfreakment, foreignizing domestication, and intra-cultural transformation.
As Andrzej Mencwel observed, “as a result of fundamental historical changes” the need arises for “restructuring of the whole present memory and tradition system” (Rodzinna Europa po raz pierwszy). Changes of such significance took place in Poland during the Second World War and several following decades. Collective experience of that time was made up of – apart from political antagonisms – social and cultural phenomena such as change of elites, reinterpretation of their grand narratives (or symbolic world), the ultimate inclusion of the masses into the national project based on the post-gentry tradition and national history, the intensive development of urban lifestyle and the ex...
Essays in honor of the scholarly work and institutional leadership of Jehuda Reinharz, focusing on the role of the individual in history