Peretz/Kafka/Chagall: A Jewish Modernist Triptych

Peretz/Kafka/Chagall: A Jewish Modernist Triptych

An Online Course with Dr. Barbara Mann 

Three Thursdays: September 8, 15, 22  
6:30–8:00 p.m. ET   

Jewish writers and artists engaged modernity’s blessings and challenges through a variety of forms.  Dr. Barbara Mann, professor of Jewish Literature at JTS, will lead the consideration of paradigmatic works by three key figures from the early 20th century—Y. L. Peretz, Franz Kafka, and Marc Chagall—focusing on shared themes and divergent modes of expression. This course will cover a series of interwar paintings by Chagall from Vitebsk and Paris and short readings for Peretz and Kafka (in translation from Yiddish and German, respectively), to be prepared in advance. This program is co-presented with the 92nd Street Y. 

Cost: $99

Barbara Mann is the Chana Kekst Professor of Jewish Literature at JTS. Areas of expertise include literary studies, critical theory, and modern Jewish cultures; her interdisciplinary scholarship has analyzed the relation between space, memory, and cultural representation. Mann has lectured widely in the United States, Europe and Israel. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and has previously taught in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University. Her latest book is The Object of Jewish Literature: A Material History (Yale University Press, 2022).