Sponsored by the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago
Farbindungen / פֿאַרבינדונגען is a virtual Yiddish Studies Conference which highlights the work of graduate students, undergraduates, and early career professionals.
The virtual 2026 Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference, ייִדיש בײַ דער ארבעט / Yiddish at Work, has concluded! Thank you to all who submitted a proposal for papers and workshops for this year's conference, thanks to our faculty moderators, and many thanks to our engaged and thoughtful audience members.
The 2026 keynote address will available on our YouTube page. Recordings of select 2026 conference presentations will be made public!
We would love to keep in touch. Join the Conference email list to hear about upcoming events, schedule, registration, and keynote announcements, and opportunities to join the Farbindungen Yiddish Conference Committee!
Sponsored by the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago, the Farbindungen / פֿאַרבינדונגען Yiddish Studies Conference took place virtually on Sunday, February 15th and Monday, February 16th, 2025.
In our fifth gathering, Farbindungen 2026, we aimed to bring together graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and early career professionals to consider the idea of “ייִדיש בײַ דער ארבעט / Yiddish at Work,” including questions of labor, language and linguistics, institutions, politics and activism, cultural development, and philosophical inquiries.. Through a keynote address, interactive workshops, and moderated paper panels, participants were invited to study, envision, and build the future of the field.
Conference Theme: ייִדיש בײַ דער ארבעט / Yiddish at Work
Keynote speakers: Miriam Udel (Emory University) and Caroline Luce (UCLA)
Keynote moderator: Elena Hoffenberg (University of Chicago)
Workshop facilitators: Yasha Giner and Francesca Rubinson (Workers Circle), Katka Mazurczhak (Independent Scholar), Sasha Berenstein (Yiddish Book Center/Boston Workers Circle/Queer Yiddish Program)
Faculty moderators: Kenneth Moss (University of Chicago), Avia Moore (KlezKanada), Michael Rom (Hebrew Union College), Anna Elena Torres (University of Chicago), Mo Pareles (University of British Columbia)
Presenters: Annie Sommer Kaufman (YIVO Chicago), Hinde Ena Burstein (Monash University), Dina Gorelik (UC Dublin), Judy Goldstein (Independent Scholar), Serra Bardin (U of Oklahoma), Molly Newman (McGill University), Ernesto Mifano Honigsberg (University of São Paolo), Jo Lemann (Harvard University), Shanie Kalikow (University of Amsterdam), Ben Schacht (Independent Scholar), Hannah B. Wickham (University of Toronto), Maya González (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Guli Dolev-Hashiloni (Technical University Berlin)
Organizing committee chairs: Sean Sidky (Virginia Tech) and Jacqueline Krass (UW Madison)
Organizing committee: Corbin Allardice (Johns Hopkins), Alona Bach (MIT), Carolyn Beard (University of Toronto), Eyshe Beirich (Columbia University), Cameron Bernstein (UQ-Ochsner), Sarah Biskowitz (NYU), Sophie Cardin (Oxford), Judy Goldstein (Independent Scholar), Jacob Hermant (University of Toronto), Tyler Kliem (Yiddish Book Center), Ryan Muller, Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler, Joseph Reisberg (Johns Hopkins), Jules Riegel (Harvard), Parker T. Robbins (University of Chicago), Caleb Sher (University of Toronto), Sophia Shoulson (Johns Hopkins), Chana Toth-Sewell (University of Chicago), Hannah MJB Wickham (University of Toronto), Jakub Zygmunt (University of Warsaw)
Faculty advisors: Jessica Kirzane (University of Chicago)
Additional Support from the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center: Mike Phillips, Mark Lester, and Orit Bashkin
Miriam Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies at Emory University. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard University and was ordained in 2019 at Yeshivat Maharat. Udel is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press) and Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature (Princeton UP, 2025) and editor and translator of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature (NYU Press, 2020). Her research looks to children's literature and culture as a powerful force for political formation and a resource for the intergenerational transmission of culture, values, and ideology.
Caroline Luce is a Project Director with the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment's Memory Work initiative. She previously served as the Chief Curator of Mapping Jewish LA, a project of the UCLA Leve Center for Jewish Studies and is also chair of the Communications Committee of UC-AFT, representing librarians and non-tenured faculty at the University of California. Her research specialty is immigration, labor and working-class culture in the American west and her book, Yiddish in the Land of Sunshine: Race, Labor and Jewish Radicalism in Los Angeles will be published by NYU Press in 2026.
Farbindungen Program.pdf