Teaching á la Modiya

“Teaching à la Modiya” offers strategies and multi-media primary sources for teaching selected readings related to cultural practices at the intersection of Jews, media, and religion. Each installment brings students into direct contact with the primary sources upon which a given reading is based. Inspired by Teaching the Journal of American History, each installment includes a reading, commentary by the author, and exercises using primary sources (artifacts, photographs, film clips, audio, excerpts from a variety of texts), as well as recommended readings and links to relevant materials accessible online.

The first installment is dedicated to "Absolut Tchotchke," Chapter 5 of Jeffrey Shandler's, Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (University of California Press, 2005).

This chapter explores how American Jews express their postvernacular relationship to Yiddish through objects.

The Absolut Tchotchke installment includes the complete chapter, discussion questions, recommended readings, and four exercises, together with primary source materials, on the following topics:

• Analyzing Objects of Postvernacular Yiddish
• Mock Yiddish-English Dictionaries
• Postvernacular Yiddish on eBay
• Material Culture of Other Postvernacular Languages (Irish, Occitan)

“Teaching à la Modiya” is a project of the Working Group on Jews Media and Religion, which is convened by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media.

If you are curious, click here.