Morris, Ida and Alan Heilig Lecture with Anna Elena Torres, University of Chicago.
Remote Lecture: Oct 28, 5:30pm.
Registration on Eventbrite is required; tickets on sale Oct 18, 6pm: https://radicalstillness.eventbrite.com
In the midst of war, forced mobility, and mechanical acceleration, how did poets of the transnational Yiddish avant-garde theorize stillness?
This talk examines the poetics of speed, stillness, and velocity in the Yiddish poetry, social theory, and manifestos of Perets Markish, Tsilye (Celia) Dropkin, Debora Vogel (Dvoyre Fogel), and others. Placing non-mobility at the center of Modernist forms reveals the poets’ concern with disability, domesticity, and critique of war.
Anna Elena Torres is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Torres’ forthcoming book is titled Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press). This project examines the literary production, language politics, and religious thought of Jewish anarchist movements from 1870 to the present in Moscow, Tel Aviv, London, Buenos Aires, and New York City. Torres co-edited Freedom’s Fullness: Histories of Jewish Anarchism with labor historian Kenyon Zimmer (Illinois University Press, 2022). Torres has also recently co-edited a special issue of In geveb on the Polish poet, philosopher, and art critic Debora Vogel. Torres’ writing has appeared in Nashim, In geveb, Jewish Quarterly Review, the anthology Feminisms in Motion: A Decade of Intersectional Feminist Media (AK Press), and elsewhere. Torres has also worked as a muralist, organizer, and set designer.
