Yiddish Paris: Creating a Jewish Nation Between Two World Wars

Monday, September 19 at 7:00pm (MT)
Register for the Zoom Webinar: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UGT2uvcDToi_CCmuR1swcw

How did Yiddish culture become the basis for Jewish life in France during the 1920s and 1930s? How did Jewish emigrants from communist, socialist, and other backgrounds come together in Paris to create a new type of diasporic Jewish nationalism through theater troupes, choruses, and a pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair, insisting on the ability of Jews to retain their distinctive identity even in a French state known for demanding the assimilation of immigrant and minority groups?

Join Professor Nick Underwood (Berger-Neilsen Chair of Judaic Studies and Assistant Professor of History at the College of Idaho) and Professor Elias Sacks (Director of the Program in Jewish Studies at CU Boulder) as they explore these questions and celebrate Underwood’s new book, Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (2022).

Dr. Underwood received his PhD in History (with endorsement in Jewish Studies) from CU Boulder in 2016. Prior to his current appointment, Underwood held postdocs at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project.

Underwood’s research focuses on the development of Yiddish culture in France as an outgrowth of Eastern European Jewish migration there during the twentieth century.  He is most interested in how cultural institutions operated and developed programming as well as some of the groups those institutions spawn, such as theatre troupes, singing groups, or sports clubs. Underwood’s first project was focused on the 1920s and 1930s, and he is currently working on a project that brings that research into the years following the Holocaust in France.

This program is part of our Peak to Peak series, which is supported by CU Boulder’s Office for Outreach and Engagement Arts and Humanities Initiative and brings CU Boulder scholars into conversation with audiences and communities across Colorado and beyond.