*IN YIDDISH* Sebastian Schulman, "Esperanto: The Other Jewish Language"
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Himel Family Yiddish Lecture Series
Co-sponsored by the Al and Malka Green Fund in Yiddish Studies
Sebastian Schulman (Writer, Editor, Literary Translator)
Esperanto: The Other Jewish Language
Invented by L.L. Zamenhof, a Yiddish-speaking Jew, in 1887, Esperanto was envisioned as a neutral, international second language for all, a linguistic answer to the Jewish Question, and a chance at world peace. Placing an internationalist reading of Yiddish cultural history beside a Jewish look at the history of Esperanto, this lecture will argue that la lingvo internacia has been intimately shaped by the contours of Jewish history writ large. The talk will also take a look at the quixotic world of contemporary Esperanto culture and what its examination might bring to a better understanding of other language-by-choice communities.
This lecture will feature Professor Joshua Fogel (York University) as a discussant.
Sebastian Schulman is a scholar, writer, editor, and literary translator from Yiddish, Esperanto, French, and Russian. His original writing, scholarship, and translations have appeared in several anthologies and more than a dozen journals, including Two Lines, Words Without Borders, and Electric Literature. Schulman's translation of Spomenka Stimec’s Esperanto-language novel Croatian War Nocturnal was published by Phoneme Media/Deep Vellum in 2017. He has held leadership positions in several Jewish cultural organizations, including as the executive director of KlezKanada, and, currently, as the director of special projects and partnerships at the Yiddish Book Center. He lives in Montréal, Québec (Tiohtià:ke).
Joshua Fogel, professor of Chinese and Japanese history at York University. PhD, Columbia Univ 1980. He is author, editor, or translator of 74 books. In the field of Yiddish studies, he has translated the Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur (10 volumes) and several other works. He is presently working on the dawn of the Esperanto movement in China and Japan.