The Mosse/Weintstein Center for Jewish Studies at UW-Madison invites you to our annual Kutler Lectures on October 17 and October 18, 4:00 PM, at the Pyle Center (Alumni Lounge). This year's lectures feature Dr. Eddy Portnoy, the academic advisor and exhibitions curator at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Eddy will present two lectures: "The Strange Tales of Yiddishland: Sensationalism and Yiddish Journalism"; and "The Distorted Mirror: What Yiddish Cartoons Reveal about Jewish Life in the early 20th Century."

October 17, 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
"The Strange Tales of Yiddishland: Sensationalism and Yiddish Journalism" - 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 Jewish form of sensationalism developed, one that reveals underreported aspects of Jewish life.

October 18, 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
"The Distorted Mirror: What Yiddish Cartoons Reveal about Jewish Life in the early 20th Century" - For many centuries, Jews were the target of antisemitic visuals, images that framed them negatively as one-dimensional figures. It is only with the advent of the Yiddish press that Jewish artists began to develop a visual language with which they were able to describe their own communities. Yiddish cartoons became a unique forum that considered all aspects of cultural and political life, as well as a number of little known scandals that occurred in Yiddish-speaking communities which historians have mostly ignored.