Anna Shternshis lecture on East European Jewish Culture in post-Soviet Imagination, Montreal, Canada, Feb 14, 2008
Anna Shternshis: “White Piano from the Shtetl: East European Jewish Culture in Post-Soviet Imagination”
Scholar and author Anna Shternshis will speak in English on “White Piano from the Shtetl: East European Jewish Culture in post-Soviet Imagination” on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. at the Jewish Public Library, 5151 Côte Ste-Catherine Road, Montreal. Cost $5 for JPL members and students, $10 others. Call 514-345-2627 ext. 3006 for tickets and information.
The Jewish Public Library, founded in Montreal in 1914, is committed to encouraging and promoting the Yiddish language, culture and literature, by collecting and preserving Yiddish materials, and by presenting a variety of cultural events.
How do post-Soviet Jews imagine their roots? What aspects of East European Jewish nostalgia do they cherish? What does it mean for our understanding of secular Jewish identity? Anna Shternshis offers examples from post-Soviet films, Jewish restaurant menus, musical performances and Russian-language blogs in order to analyze the trends of contemporary Russian Jewish culture.
Anna Shternshis holds a D.Phil. in Modern Languages and Literatures from Oxford University and currently teaches at the University of Toronto. She is the author of the 2006 book Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939.