In the first decades of the twentieth century, artists and authors reacted to various social, economic, technological, and political changes with new forms of creative expression, a global phenomenon that has been labeled modernism. This exhibit highlights the transnational, cross-cultural, and multilingual dimensions of Jewish modernism, which includes both Jewish authors and the role of Jewishness in modernist works.
This exhibition is shaped by the undergraduates and graduate students who took the Spring 2023 course “Mapping Jewish Modernism, associated with the “Global Jewish Modernism” Lab, a Humanities Unbounded initiative. Taught by the co-directors of the lab Kata Gellen (German Studies) and Saskia Ziolkowski (Romance Studies), the students explored modernist Jewish literature and its movements, ultimately producing final research projects and exhibit labels for their chosen materials from Rare Books.
EVENTS
The Global Jewish Modernism Lab will hold two spring events that complement the exhibit.
February 28th 5-7 p.m. come to the Exhibit Opening, held in the Holsti-Anderson Family Room (153 Rubenstein) and exhibit space (Mary Duke Biddle Room in Rubenstein). After a reception, Yitzhak Lewis, Assistant Professor of Humanities at Duke Kunshan University, will give a talk and students involved in curating the exhibit will briefly present their work.
March 20th, 12-2 p.m., also in the Holsti-Anderson Family Room (153 Rubenstein), the Archives, Exhibits, and Literature Dialogue will take place during lunch. Two visitors, Emma Bond and Max Czollek, and two Duke faculty members, Annette Joseph-Gabriel and Felwine Sarr, will examine the intersections, problems, and productive intersections between archives, exhibits, and literature.
For more information please see the Global Jewish Modernism website.
