The Department of German NYU, the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia and Deutsches Haus at NYU present the public lecture “‘Like the Montagues at the Capulets’ Ball’: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity” by Sonia Gollance, Assistant Professor in Yiddish at the University College of London. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Maya Vinokour, Assistant Professor in NYU’s Department of Russian and Slavic Studies about Gollance’s recent book It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2021).
Contemporary popular culture often portrays Jewish mixed dancing as either absolutely forbidden or as the punch line of a dirty joke. Yet long before Fiddler on the Roof, German and Yiddish writers used partner dance as a powerful metaphor for social changes that transformed Jewish communities between the Enlightenment and the Holocaust. In literary texts such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s outrageous 1882 novella Der Judenraphael, set in Habsburg Galicia, young people challenge the social order through their partner choices on the dance floor, and frequently suffer tragic consequences for their rebellious behavior. Scandalous dance scenes allowed writers to convey their concerns with Jewish modernity while simultaneously entertaining their readers.
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Maya Vinokour is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and the author of Work Flows: Stalinist Liquids in Russian Labor Culture (Cornell University Press, 2024).
Sonia Gollance is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Yiddish at University College London. Her book, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2021) was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. She has co-edited a special issue of Feminist German Studies on “When Feminism and Antisemitism Collide” (with Kerry Wallach, 2023) and a special issue of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies on “Murder, Lust, and Laughter, or, Shund Theater” (with Joel Berkowitz and Nick Underwood, 2023). Her ongoing translation of Tea Arciszewska’s 1958 play Miryeml was supported by a Translation Fellowship from the Yiddish Book Center.