Headless Body Found in Topless Bar: Sensationalism and Scandal in the Yiddish Press, with Eddy Portnoy

The Annual Clara Summit Lecture Series features Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Presented by Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University.

Yiddish mass media of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is well known for having served as a guide to the modern world for many Jewish readers, introducing them to new political and social concepts, as well as to literature and the arts. But it was also a business that needed to attract and maintain a readership. As a result, a distinctly YIddish form of sensationalism developed, one that reveals underreported aspects of Jewish life. Sometimes lurid, sometimes outright fabrications, journalists of the Yiddish press created a version of sensationalism that reflected the unique interests of their readership. Using examples from newspapers in New York and Warsaw, Eddy Portnoy will show how sensationalism functioned as a key feature of Yiddish journalism.

In English, In person only, at Stanford University.

See also Yiddish lecture by Eddy Portnoy the following day, Wednesday, May 18.