We are honored to welcome Anthony Russell as the inaugural Mitchell J. Gerstein Distinguished Visiting Artist in Residence for the 2025 –26 academic year. This program was established with the purpose to encourage active artists to engage with a broad range of creative interpretations of contemporary Jewish life and its cross-sections with social justice.
Anthony Russell is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the crossroads of African American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. A leading voice in contemporary Yiddish culture, Russell has expanded his work into cultural activism through partnership with the Worker’s Circle and as an essayist in The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Ayin Press, PROTOCOLS, and Jewish Currents. Russell’s most recent release, Kosmopolitn, with Dmitri Gaskin, sets Yiddish modernist poetry for a string ensemble. He is a past Hadar Rising Song Fellow (2021-2022) and Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellow (2023-2025).
During his residency, Russell will present Wild Burning Rage and Song: Replies to Scottsboro, a concert-lecture developed with Professor Amelia Glaser, composer/vocalist Heather Klein, and composer/pianist Uri Schreter. The production features Yiddish and English poetry written in response to the pervasive climate of race prejudice that gave birth to the Scottsboro trials in 1930s – and to other injustices that would follow.
The Scottsboro Trials stand as one of the most renowned miscarriages of justice in the
history of the United States. Beginning in 1931 with a false accusation of rape against nine Black teenagers, the case went on to invigorate the Civil Rights movement, gain the international support of the Communist Party, and establish itself as a watchword of the international Left. Yiddish and Black intelligentsias respectively were no less galvanized by the case, producing a body of cultural response that passionately took up the themes of the trial, juxtaposing its American injustices with a diversity of images, tropes, and language imbued with their own distinct histories of oppression.
We look forward to welcoming Anthony Russell and the rich cultural dialogue he brings to our community.