Conference: Life and Literature of Jews from the Former Soviet Union

From the 1970s to the 1990s, waves of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union formed new communities in the United States and Canada. Our interdisciplinary conference aims to take stock of this “translingual” diaspora in Canada and the US, and investigate its diverse identities, applying cultural, linguistic, religious, political, and economic perspectives.

The symposium’s seven panels, two roundtables, two literary readings, and two special events will consider the ways hybrid identities and the literature/s written by a growing number of gifted FSU Jewish writers engage themes of immigration, ethnicity, acculturation, war, and linguistic minoritarian status. We will also discuss the place of these texts within older, more established literary canons in Canada and the US.

The event will take place in Kaneff Tower, room 519, York Univerity. Paid parking is available in nearby Vanier and York Lanes parking lots. To access the venue by public transit, please take the subway (TTC line 1) to York University station.

Host or Publisher Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies