Library of Congress – From Under the Fig Tree

Fast track

joselitJune 15, 2015November 16, 2017Leave a comment

I’ve been to a fair number of academic gatherings in my day: conferences and “un-conferences,” workshops, symposia and seminars. By now, I know pretty much what to expect. Sometimes, the proceedings take the form of panel discussions; at other times, frontal lectures are de rigueur and, of course, there’s the inevitable keynote presentation. Sure, you’re bound to pick up a new idea along the way or come face to face with a colleague whose work you know only via the printed page or online discussion groups. But that’s about as exciting as it gets. For the most part, academic gatherings tend to be more dutiful than fun.

Last week’s 15th anniversary celebration of the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center -- ScholarFest LOC, it was called -- was entirely different. It offered its participants, of which I was one, an entirely new form of scholarly exchange: lightning conversation. Much like speed-dating, this entailed a swift-paced give-n-take, a search for common ground, between two people who were not only unacquainted but on markedly different levels of the academic hierarchy.

As you can well imagine, the prospect of being up on a stage chatting away without the benefit (read: safety net) of a lectern, a set of well-prepared remarks and the gift of time had most of us -- both senior and junior colleagues alike -- in a tizzy. An exercise in spontaneity -- and in concision -- it called on skills we hadn’t honed in quite some time. No wonder the room was abuzz in anticipation. Much as we reassured ourselves and one another that we were not being graded on how well we performed, we knew deep down that these lightning conversations tested our mettle.

Most of us, I’m happy to say, passed with flying colors. Once we relaxed our shoulders and our perspective, we might even have enjoyed ourselves. Academics, after all, are not only good talkers. As ScholarFest made clear, we’re fast talkers, too.

Bygones

joselitDecember 18, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

I spend much of my time thinking about the past. Curiously enough, though, my interest remains professional rather than personal: The maintenance of friendships with childhood and high school pals has never been my strong suit. I prefer studying the past to cultivating it.

Reunion — Flickr/Northridge Alumni Bear Facts

My husband, on the other hand, has made a point of keeping in touch with friends from bygone days. In fact, just recently he met up with a former chum whom he had not seen in decades. And therein lies a tale -- a particularly Washington, D.C., tale, to boot.

Several months ago, I gave a talk at the Library of Congress, at the conclusion of which a gentleman approached the podium asking about my last name. “You wouldn’t be related to Richard Joselit?” he tentatively inquired. When I resoundingly replied in the affirmative, saying that the man in question was my husband, the questioner, with mounting animation, told me that the two had been friendly many years ago, but had since lost touch. “Please give him my warmest regards,” he said, offering me his card and email address as well.

I dutifully reported this exchange, which greatly intrigued my husband. He also expressed a keen interest in picking up where he had left off ‘lo these many years and in short order arranged with his old buddy, whose name was Joel, to get together the next time both of them would be in Washington.

I tagged along to their reunion and watched in delight as Joel and Richard rehashed old times, reminisced freely about their summertime exploits, lamented the loss of red hair and lanky frame respectively, and gossiped about what had happened to this one and that. Although time and circumstance had markedly changed both men, they reverted back to their teenage selves within the space of an hour.

At a time when memory is all too often the stuff of recrimination and suffused with both anger and sadness, how wonderful to behold memory as a form of pleasurable exchange.

Reverb 1

joselitSeptember 9, 2012November 16, 20171 Comment

Over the years, I’ve attended lots of symposia but never one that began with the ringing of chimes and concluded with a most hearty and prolonged round of applause. These two sounds, along with the sight of presenters swaying to the beat of “Yiddish Melodies in Swing” or singing the praises of the “Cohen on the Radio” vaudeville sketches with their catch-all phrase, “Radio, Shmadio,” were in full throttle at last week’s Library of Congress salute to Henry Sapoznik and the donation of his collection of Yiddish radio memorabilia.

Old radio — Old Radio. Flickr/Christos Kotsakis

Now a part of the American Folklife Center where, one hopes, it will receive a new lease on life, this treasure trove of auditory materials underscores the vibrancy of American Jewish life at the grass roots. Whether poking fun at “Sam the man who made the pants too long,” or rendering the familiar Campbell Soup jingle auf yidish, as in “Campbell Soup iz – um um - immer gut,” or introducing the very latest Hebrew folksongs, Yiddish radio informed, entertained and sustained audiences of the interwar years.

Fifty years later, Yiddish radio had the same effect on the nearly 200 people in attendance at this symposium. It held us in its static-y embrace. At many a conference, it’s customary to find more participants holding impromptu conversations in the hallway than paying attention to the proceedings.

But here, audience members sat for hours on end and listened, actually listened, to the fragments of Yiddish radio programming that have somehow survived. Nothing if not appreciative and engaged, they laughed at the funny bits, scratched their heads at other moments and consistently plied the presenters with all manner of questions.

It’s a measure of the symposium’s success – and of the enduring cultural value of Yiddish radio – that at its conclusion, people were reluctant to sign off.

Radio Days 5

joselitAugust 26, 2012November 16, 20175 Comments

Nearly thirty years ago, when musician and musicologist Henry Sapoznik first stumbled across a cache of aluminum transcription disks of Yiddish radio shows from interwar America, little did he suspect that they would find a home at the Library of Congress.

Abandoned in an attic, deposited in a dumpster, the stuff of rummage and tag sales, these acoustic artifacts, which ranged from Yiddish Melodies in Swing to Stuhmer’s Pumpernickel Program, were destined to fade away entirely had not Mr. Sapoznik recognized their value and saved them, often just in the nick of time.

But then, this stalwart champion of American Jewry’s vernacular culture did even more than that. Working together with the award-winning radio producer Dave Isay and the celebrated sound preservationist Andy Lanset, he made sure, for one thing, to preserve this material. For another, he introduced a new generation of listeners, among them historians and linguists, musicians and folklorists, to the contents of Yiddish radio by creating the Yiddish Radio Project,which aired on NPR in 2002. Once forgotten and marginalized, the sounds and sensibilities of Yiddish radio have become an integral part of how contemporary American Jews understand themselves.

Most recently, the storied American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress acquired Sapoznik’s collection of more than 1000 Yiddish radio programs, where they have now taken their rightful place as a part of the nation’s cultural patrimony.

To mark this acquisition, the Library of Congress will be hosting a two-day symposium, “The Stations That Spoke Your Language,” on September 6th and 7th. With programming as varied as Yiddish radio itself, it promises to be a lively and stimulating occasion. More to the point, perhaps, this gathering enables a grateful public to express its deepest thanks to Henry Sapoznik for attuning us to our history.

Picture perfect

joselitOctober 10, 2011November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Ever since the late 19th century, much of what we know, or think we know, about the Middle East is derived from photography, whose images run the gamut from ancient ruins to latter-day landscapes scarred by conflict, from scenes of renewal and affirmation to those of despair and anguish.

For years, the American Colony Photo Department in Jerusalem was the source of many of those images. The stereopticon slides, postcards and souvenir albums that bore its imprint, and which can now be found at the Library of Congress, focused on the seeming timelessness of the region’s landscapes and the people who inhabited it, on continuity rather than change.

The work of Sharon Ya’ari, one of Israel’s leading contemporary photographers, is something else again. Like his predecessors, he, too, trains his sights on the landscape, but where they saw only stasis, Mr. Ya’ari sees movement. Reverence was the stock-in-trade of the American Colony photographs. Sharon Ya’ari’s body of work, in striking contrast, places a premium on irony.

13190r american colony — Courtesy of the Library of Congress's collection of American Colony Photo Department.

Currently in residence at GW, where he has the distinction of being its very first Schusterman Foundation Visiting Artist from Israel, Mr. Ya’ari will be giving a talk next week – on October 18th, at noon, at the Library of Congress – in which he will be interpreting a number of American Colony photographs against the grain of his own work.

The juxtaposition of these two compelling, but markedly different, aesthetic and cultural perspectives should make for an illuminating experience and one that I hope many of my readers in the DC area will be able to attend.

As we’re sure to discover, when it comes to the Middle East, there’s always more than meets the eye.