Farbindungen is organized by a committee of graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and early career professionals in Yiddish Studies. If interested in helping organize future events for early career Yiddishists, be in touch at farbindungen@gmail.com.
Biographies of Farbindungen speakers will be circulated prior to the conference.
Corbin Allardice / קאָרבין אַלאַרדאַיס
they/their / זי/איר
PhD Candidate in Jewish Languages and Literatures, Johns Hopkins
Corbin is a PhD student and translator based in Baltimore. Their research focuses on Modern Yiddish poetry and poetics.
Alona Bach / אַלונה באַך
she/her / זי/איר
PhD student in the Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alona's research interests lie at the intersections of Yiddish and electric light in the interwar period. Outside of the archive, she is also an actor and sometimes-cartoonist.
Twitter: @bachwards
Carolyn Beard / קריינע באָרד
she/her / זי/איר
PhD student in modern Jewish thought, University of Toronto
An alumna of Princeton, Harvard, and Fulbright Germany, Carolyn studies the reception of ancient religious textual traditions in modern Jewish and Christian thought, with an emphasis on the problem of evil and death of God. She lives in Niagara Falls, NY with her husband Michael, their dog Peaches, and their three cats, Maui, Molly, and Potato.
Twitter: @cebeardedbard
Eyshe Beirich / איישע בײַריך
he/him / ער/אים
PhD Student in Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Eyshe is a PhD student, translator, and Yiddish writer living in New York. His research focuses on tensions between Yiddish & German literature, European nationalisms and colonialism, as well as ideologies of race and language.
Cameron Bernstein / קאַמעראָן בערנשטײן
she/her / זי/איר
MD Student, University of Queensland-Oschner Medical Program
Cameron is a TikTok content creator and Yiddishist from the Chicagoland Jewish community. She is passionate about social media as a forum to share Yiddish language, history, and culture. She was the '21-'22 Communications Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and is completing her MD with the University of Queensland-Oschner Medical Program.
Twitter: @c_o_bernstein
TikTok: @c.o.bernstein
Sarah Biskowitz / שׂרה ביסקאָװיץ
she/her / זי/איר
Program Manager, Jewish Women’s Archive
Sarah Biskowitz works at the Jewish Women’s Archive in Boston as the manager of the Rising Voices Fellowship, a writing program for high school students centering Judaism, feminism, and social justice. Previously, Sarah completed the Year Program at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies and served as the Richard S. Herman fellow in bibliography and exhibitions at the Yiddish Book Center.
Website: sarahbiskowitz.com
Sophie Cardin / שׂמחה קאַרדאָנסקי
she/they / זי/זײ
MPhil Student in Political Theory, University of Oxford
Sophie is reading for an MPhil in Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Her principal research interests are utopia and Yiddish political thought.
Twitter: @sophcardin
Bsky: @sophiecardin.bsky.social
Anita Christensen / חנהלה קריסטענסען
she/her / זי/איר
PhD fellow in Religious Studies/Jewish Studies, Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
Based in Norway, Annie is pursuing PhD research on Yiddish in contemporary Sweden. She is a graduate of UCL and Cambridge University and a former Yiddish Book Center Fellow.
Jacob Hermant / יעקבֿ הערמאָנט
he/they / ער/זײ
PhD Student in Yiddish and Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
Jacob is a second-year PhD student at the University of Toronto, whose research focuses on nature and climate imagery in diasporic Jewish literatures. They also work in 20th-century Jewish philosophy and literary criticism.
Joseph Reisberg / חײם רײַזבערג
he/him / ער/אים
PhD Student, Johns Hopkins
Joseph Reisberg was the 2022–2023 Applebaum Family Fellow in Bibliography and Translation at the Yiddish Book Center. His translations appear in Jewish Fiction.net, The Loch Raven Review, and Yiddish in the South.
Tetiana Shyshkina / טעטיאַנע שישקינע
she/her / זי/איר
PhD Candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, and DH Fellow at Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz
Tetiana Shyshkina is a PhD Candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Justus-Liebig University in Gießen, Germany, and is currently a Digital Humanities Fellow at the Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Germany. Her research interests lay in the area of Soviet Jewish Studies. She earned her bachelor's degree in Software Engineering and subsequently completed master’s degrees in Political Science (2017) and History with a specialization in Jewish Studies (2019) at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv.
Website: https://shyshkina.eu/academic-cv
Caleb Sher / שמואל שער
he/him / ער/אים
Richard S. Herman Senior Fellow, Yiddish Book Center
Currently the Richard S. Herman Senior Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, where he spends his days surrounded by mountains of books, Caleb also holds an MA in Comparative Literature with a certificate in Jewish Studies from the University of Toronto. His research interests include digital Yiddish and meme studies, and he is passionate about the digital humanities and public-oriented scholarship. Caleb has recently discovered a passion for frog-centric literature af yidish.
Sophia Shoulson / שׂרהלע שאולסאָן
she/her / זי/איר
PhD student in Modern Languages and Literatures, Johns Hopkins University
Sophia began her PhD in Jewish Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins in the fall of 2020 and has helped organize Farbindungen since its first conference in 2022. She is interested in the social and material histories of Yiddish literature and print culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Sophia also spent two years as the Richard S. Herman Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA.
Twitter: @sophielizbear
Bsky: @sophielizbear.bsky.social
Sean Sidky / שאָן סידקי
he/him / ער/אים
Visiting Lecturer, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University Bloomington
Sean studies Yiddish poetry, poetics, catastrophe literature, and representations of the Holocaust, and writes about teaching and pedagogy. His current research is on wartime Yiddish Holocaust poetry written in the US. He has also been a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow.
Hannah MJB Wickham / חנה װיקהאַם
they/their
זי/איר, זײ/זײער
PhD Student In Yiddish and Jewish Studies, University of Toronto
From Toronto, Hannah is an PhD student studying Yiddish in the Germanic Languages & Literatures Department at the University of Toronto. Their research looks to Tkhines as both ritual practice and as material objects in order to uncover their philosophy of grief.
Jakub Zygmunt / יעקבֿ זיגמונט
he/him / ער/אים
PhD Student in Literary Studies, University of Warsaw
Jakub holds degrees in Law and Jewish Studies, which he pursued at the College of Inter-Area Individual Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw. For his PhD, he prepares a dissertation entitled “Celia Dropkin’s Oeuvre. Literary Traditions and Contexts of Translation.” His research interests include Yiddish literature, particularly poetry written by women.