Transcending Boundaries: Jewish Languages, Identities and Cultures

Sunday, February 18

9:00     Coffee and light breakfast

9:30     Welcome

10:00    Introduction:
Deborah Schiffrin (Georgetown) and Elana Shohamy (Tel Aviv)
“I Talk, Therefore I Am: Jewishness as a Linguistic Enterprise,” Lewis Glinert (Dartmouth)

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 Immigrants in the
 United States”, David Andrews (Georgetown)
“Learning and Using Hebrew in the United States,” Jonathan Paradise (U Minnesota)

12:00 Lunch     
Featuring music by the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School a capella group.

1:00  Panel:  Performing Jewish Languages, Identities and Cultures
“Ladino and Sephardic culture”, Gloria Ascher (Tufts University)
“Yiddish as Performance Art”, Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers)
“Film and Fiction as Locus of Debate Over Post-Nationalist Identity,” Eric Zakim (U MD)

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

3:45      Coffee Break

4:15    Panel:  Speaking Jewish in Israel
“Is Hebrew a Jewish Language? 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)

6:00 Dinner
Featuring Klezmer music

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

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 (U MD)
“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)

10:30 Discussion
with Hadassah Lieberman 

11:00    Coffee Break

11:30  Panel: Performing Memory (II)
“Language of Narrative, Drama and Memoir”, Deborah Tannen (Georgetown)
“Transcending Boundaries across Characters, Events and Time”
Discussion of “Right as Rain”  Derek Goldman (Georgetown)  

1:00    Closing Remarks:
Elana Shohamy and Deborah Schiffrin


* 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