Notes, Cigarettes and a Ring

Join Queen’s Jewish Studies on Wednesday, May 26th, from 1-2PM (EST) for Notes, Cigarettes and a Ring, a converstation between Anna Shternshis, Vassili Schedrin and Diego Rotman on the occasion of the launching of Diego Rotman’s book “The Yiddish Stage As a Temporary Home Dzigan and Schumacher’s Satirical Theater 1927-1980” De Gruyter, 2021.

Zoom registration link: https://queensu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwoduutpjMjG9G_EFGfgxx859w0kQWzVVTe 

Prof. Anna Shternshis is the Al and Malka Green Professor, in Yiddish Language and Literature, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, as well as the Director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Among her books are: When Sonya Met Boris: Oral History of Jewish Life under Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006

Dr. Vassili Schedrin, Queen's University

Vassili Schedrin is Alfred and Isabel Bader Post-Doctoral Fellow in Jewish History and Coordinator of the Russian and East European Studies Network at Queen’s University.  He teaches and studies a variety of topics related to cultural history of Russian Jews from the eighteenth to the twentieth century including Soviet Yiddish culture and theater. He is an author of Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds: Jewish Bureaucracy and Policymaking in Late Imperial Russia, 1850-1917 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016) that examines the phenomenon of Jewish bureaucracy in the Russian empire; and co-author of In America non ci sono Zar. Le relazioni russo-statunitensi: questione ebraica e nascita della diplomazia umanitaria (1880-1914) [There are no Tsars in America. Russian-US Relations: the Jewish Question and the Birth of Humanitarian Diplomacy (1880-1914)] (Firenze: Le Lettere, 2021). His current project is a biography of Solomon Mikhoels, the brightest star of Soviet Yiddish theater and a virtual symbol of Russian Jewish culture. This project situated at the intersection of academic scholarship and theatrical performance, of archival research and playwriting.

Dr. Diego Rotman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Senior Lecturer, researcher, multidisciplinary artist, and curator. His research focuses on performative practices as related to local historiography, Yiddish theater, contemporary art and folklore and research creation projects. Since July 2019 he is the Head of the Department of Theater Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

His new book, in its Hebrew version published by Magnes University Press in 2017 was the recipient of the 2019 Shapiro Award for the Best Book in Israel Studies. Together with Lea Mauas, Rotman edited the book The Ethnography Department of the Museum of the Contemporary, which was published in 2017 by the Underground Academy Press.

About the book: Rotman’s book takes us through the fascinating life and career of the most important comic duo in Yiddish Theater. Spanning over the course of half a century – from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Poland – they produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during the Second World War and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust. It finally describes their time in Israel.