Jewish Buenos Aires

FAIN: FS-50094-06

Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)
David W. Foster (Project Director: March 2006 to May 2008)

A three-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty on Argentine Jewish literature and culture, to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The seminar will focus on major texts in twentieth-century Jewish culture as it has played out in the contest of immigration and assimilation Buenos Aires, Argentina, the major center of Jewish culture in Latin America. Through a detailed examination of these works as literary texts that interpret the Jewish experience in Buenos Aires, the seminar will provide participants with an important grounding in this important dimension of ethnic culture in Argentina and, by implication, in other Latin American societies. Participants will be college and university professors of Latin American studies, some of whom may have some familiarity with Argentina; all will have a working command of Spanish. Latin American Jewish Studies is a relatively recent area of interest to Latin Americanists, and the seminar will contribute toward addressing the critical lack of trained scholars in the field.