Department of Linguistics

The Symposium will examine how Jews have been making and remaking identities and cultures through language and other symbolic media over time, across place and within genres. For Jews, relationships among language, identity and culture have been reshaped, and have been reshaping one another, for thousands of years. Each one of these different facets of Jewish life has been woven and rewoven together over time and across the many different places where Jews have lived (from ancient Israel, the wide ranging Diaspora in Europe, Asia and the Americas, to modern Israel). Likewise, Jewish representations of selfhood, nation and culture appear within a wide variety of genres ranging from religious texts to oral story telling, oral history, fiction, drama and music, each of which provides different formal and performance options for weaving language together with identity and culture.

February 18-19, 2007
Georgetown University
Riggs Library

To RSVP for the Keynote Event
To RSVP for the Conference

For Information:
202-687-4245
cjcinfo@georgetown.edu

Sunday, February 18

9:00     Coffee and light breakfast

9:30     Welcome

9:45    Introduction: Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University)
Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown University) and Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv University)
“I Talk, Therefore I Am: Jewishness as a Linguistic Enterprise,” Lewis Glinert (Dartmouth University)

10:30  Panel:  Speaking Jewish in the United States
“Jewish American English,” Sarah Bunin Benor (Hebrew Union College)
“Who am I? Language and Identity of Third Wave Russian Émigrés in the United States”, David Andrews (Georgetown University)
“Learning and Using Hebrew in the United States,” Jonathan Paradise (University of Minnesota)

Moderator: Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv University)

12:00 Lunch    

1:00  Panel:  Performing Jewish Languages, Identities and Cultures
“Ladino: Performance, Survival and Resurgence,” Gloria Ascher (Tufts University)
“Yiddish as Performance Art”, Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers University)
“Language and Immediacy in the Hebrew Cinematic Lens,” Eric Zakim (University of Maryland)

Moderator: Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University)

2:45    Panel: Performing Memory (I)
Ari Roth (Artistic Director; Theater J, Washington D.C.)
Henry Greenspan (Psychologist and Playwright, University of Michigan);

Moderator: Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown University)

3:45      Coffee Break

4:15    Panel:  Speaking Jewish in Israel
“Interpreting 'Jewish' Languages in Israel Today: Language Policy in Israel,” Elana Shohamy (Tel-Aviv University)
“Language Policies and Practices of Palestinian Arabs in Israel”, Uri Horesh (Georgetown University)
“Judeo Arabic in Israel and Elsewhere”, Benjamin  Hary (Emory University)

Moderator: John Myhill (University of Haifa)

6:00 Dinner
Featuring Klezmer music

8:00 Keynote Event: A Conversation with Cynthia Ozick
Jacques Berlinerblau (Georgetown University)

Monday, February 19

9:00  Panel:  Jewish Languages, Past and Present
“Language Loyalty and Language choice; Yiddish and Hebrew in the Aftermath of the Holocaust”, Miriam Isaacs (University of Maryland)
“Broken Hearts, Broken Homes: The Holocaust and Its Languages", Alan Rosen (Yad Vashem)
“Old Languages in New Stories: Code-switching in Retellings of Holocaust Oral Histories”, Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown Univeristy)

Moderator: Deborah Tannen (Georgetown University)

10:30 Discussion

11:00    Coffee Break

11:30  Panel: Performing Memory (II)
“Voicing my Father: Bringing my Jewish Identity to the Stage”, Deborah Tannen (Georgetown University)
“Voicing Anne Frank: Adaptation and Appropriation in a New Telling of Her Story”, Derek Goldman (Georgetown University) 

Moderator: Miriam Isaacs (University of Maryland)

1:00    Closing Remarks:
Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv University) and Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown University)


* Sponsored by the Program for Jewish Civilization, The Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University, and the National Resource Center on the Middle East