Who are the storytellers of Yiddish literature? Where did their stories come from? Why did the short story become the central genre of modern Jewish literary culture? This course explores the genealogy of the Yiddish short story from the hasidic folk tale to the modernist sketch, from the monologues of Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer to the haunting narratives of David Bergelson and Der Nister. Stretching from the nineteenth century to the present, we follow the short story in its comparative contexts from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, Palestine/Israel, and the US.
Founded as a graduate program in 1904 and joining with the undergraduate Literature Concentration in 2007, Harvard’s Department of Comparative Literature operates at the crossroads of multilingualism, literary study, and media history.
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