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Jewish Music Classes

Dr Diana Matut will be teaching the second part of this year’s Jewish Music Class through the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL) in Hilary Term 2025.

The British Library © British Library Board (MS Or. 1047, fol. 2r)

Yiddish Musics: The 20th and 21st Century

This academic year, Dr Diana Matut has set at theme for the entire year with a special emphasis in each term so that prospective students can always join anew.

Michaelmas Term 2024: Yiddish Musics: The 20th and 21st Century

Hilary Term 2025: Yiddish Musics: The 20th and 21st Century (Second Part)

Trinity Term 2025: Yiddish Musics: The 20th and 21st Century (Third Part)

Hilary Term 2025:

Yiddish Musics: The 20th and 21st Century

Mondays, 18:15-19:15 UK Time, Online via Zoom

This course focuses on the development of Yiddish musics mainly after Second World War.
The entire spectrum of Yiddish (mainly vocal) music making will be considered and organized according to topics such as: nostalgia, belonging and up rootedness; building the canon of Yiddish song performances; contemporary song cultures and cultural translations; Yiddish film music and music in Yiddish films; Yiddish activism; inner-Hasidic developments (women’s, religious and children’s songs); new Yiddish opera and theatre song – to name but a few.
This year-long course will also include the possibility for participant observation while exploring strategies of Yiddish song writing and/or song translations from or into Yiddish. It will explore, question and debate the “post” of “post vernacular” and “postmodernity”.
We will also welcome at least one guest per term. Invited are song writers, musicians and Yiddish activists.
Knowledge of Yiddish is helpful, but not required to take this class.

 

The first day of class for this course in Hilary Term 2025 will be Monday, 20th January 2025.

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Applications for this course are now open. Applications will remain open until Wednesday 15th January 2025 at 12 noon (Oxford time). (You can check time-zone comparisons on sites such as this one). Please submit your completed application form as a Word document to the OCHJS Academic Administrator, Ms Priscilla Lange, by email at academic.administrator@ochjs.ac.uk no later than Wednesday 15th January 2025 at 12 noon (Oxford time). Please find the application form here. Individuals whose applications are successful will be notified on Thursday 16th January 2025.