Yiddish Metal as a Manifestation of Postvernacularity
Dr. Lily Kahn, University College London
Wednesday, January 12, 9:30 AM over zoom
Registration link: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErf-2gpzIvGtU9AGegSveBuZuxSRYyMHhk
This event is sponsored by the Departments of Germanic Studies and Linguistics and the Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies.
Lily Kahn offers a sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspective on Heavy Metal lyrics in Yiddish, describing the lyrics as a manifestation of postvernacularity. Yiddish Heavy Metal bands reinterpret older Yiddish repertoire rather than writing new lyrics, and this is a reflection of the iconic role the language plays for band members and audiences.
Lily Kahn is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Languages at UCL. Her main research areas are Hebrew in Eastern Europe, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages. She is also interested in multicultural Shakespeare, translation studies, and endangered and minority languages. She is co-editor with Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi of the UCL Press series Grammars of World and Minority Languages and Textbooks of World and Minority Languages. She is currently writing a grammar of nineteenth-century Enlightenment Hebrew (with Sonya Yampolskaya) and conducting an AHRC-funded research project on the language of contemporary Hasidic Yiddish around the world (with Kriszta Eszter Szendrői).