Below The Line: The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures

FAIN: RZ-266172-19

Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)
Shachar M. Pinsker (Project Director: December 2018 to May 2022)
Naomi Brenner (Co Project Director: February 2019 to May 2022)
Matthew Handelman (Co Project Director: February 2019 to May 2022)

Two international conferences, a website, and digital resources on Jewish culture and “feuilleton,” a newspaper insert popular throughout Europe from the 19th to the early-20th centuries. (12 months)

This convening grant would fund two conferences to bring together international scholars working on the feuilleton, an important and immensely popular feature in newspapers that has been largely forgotten. Our project proposes the feuilleton as a new area for interdisciplinary and multilingual inquiry, seeing the feuilleton as a critical juncture in the production of modern cultures and the public sphere. It focuses on the unique place of the feuilleton in modern Jewish cultures, which were highly multilingual and transnational. By assembling scholars in literature, history, and communications from North America, Europe, and Israel, we will examine the development of the feuilleton as a new form of media and make key texts accessible online for scholars, students, and the public. We will explore and sharpen the topic of investigation, identify and discuss significant periodicals and feuilletons, and plan subsequent publication in print and digital forms.

Associated Products

“Multilingual Anxiety and the Invention of the Hebrew Native: A Reading of a Hebrew Feuilleton by S. Ben Zion” (Article)
Title: “Multilingual Anxiety and the Invention of the Hebrew Native: A Reading of a Hebrew Feuilleton by S. Ben Zion”
Author: Roni Henig
Abstract: This article explores the relationship between multilingualism, the attempted revival of Hebrew speech, and the sense of muteness that accompanied Hebrew literary production in the first decade of the twentieth century. It does so through a close reading of a Hebrew feuilleton, written by Simhah Ben Zion and published in 1907 in the first issue of the Palestine-based Hebrew journal Ha-’omer. At the center of the feuilleton is a living wonderment: an eight-year-old girl—the narrator’s daughter—who speaks no fewer than eight languages, one for each year of her life. Although the narrator and his wife, both ardent Zionists, struggle to maintain a Hebrew-speaking home, they soon learn that their sociolinguistic reality does not coincide with the monolingual fantasy of imposing Hebrew as an exclusive, isolated language. The article argues that in the midst of an endeavor to reterritorialize Hebrew creativity in Palestine and constitute the Hebrew-speaking native, Ben Zion’s feuilleton satirically narrates Hebrew revival as a chaotic Babel, revealing not only the failures of this project but also its latent anxieties.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://arcade.stanford.edu/dibur/multilingual-anxiety-and-invention-hebrew-native-reading-hebrew-feuilleton-s-ben-zion
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Dibur: Literary Journal
Publisher: Arcade: A Digital Salon

“Reflections on the Possibilities of German-Jewish Authorship and Literature” (Article)
Title: “Reflections on the Possibilities of German-Jewish Authorship and Literature”
Author: Liliane Weissberg
Abstract: The article explores the relations between feuilletons and German-Jewish writers.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781612497303
Format: Other
Periodical Title: The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism
Publisher: Purdue University Press

Coffeehouses, Journalism, and the Rise of Modern Jewish Literary Culture (Article)
Title: Coffeehouses, Journalism, and the Rise of Modern Jewish Literary Culture
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Abstract: This article focuses on the role of the coffeehouse in the Haskalah and its literatures. Scholars of modern Jewish literature have not paid enough attention to the coffeehouse and to its important role as a new kind of Jewish space, one that enabled and fostered novel forms of journalism and literature. This is especially true for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the period associated mostly with the Haskalah. Thinking about Haskalah culture in spatial terms usually relies on a dichotomy between the synagogue and secular institutions, the idea that religion constituted the single moral authority and was exclusively associated with the synagogue, the house of study, and other traditional Jewish spaces. This article focuses on the importance of the café as a thirdspace, in Edward Soja’s terms, one that does not fit comfortably in the dichotomy between religious and secular spaces (or other dichotomies such as public and private, inside and outside). The café was crucial for the creation of modern Jewish culture, and it helps us to identify and understand the contiguities of the modern Jewish literary complex.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.jstor.org/journal/prooftexts
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Prooftexts
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Below the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Below the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Author: Naomi Brenner
Author: Matthew Handelman
Author: Ofer Dynes
Abstract: This conference explored the feuilleton as a meeting place for journalism, politics and literature; a locus of urban culture; a site of negotiation for transnational identities; and a rich topic for the digital humanities. We welcomed papers from history, literary studies, cultural studies, journalism and other related fields and encourage a wide range of geographic locations, theoretical, disciplinary and linguistic approaches
Date Range: 11/18/2019-11/19-2019
Location: Jerusalem, Israel
Primary URL: https://feuilletonproject.org/s/below-the-line/page/2019-11_conference
Primary URL Description: Conference program

Below the Line: The Feuilleton & Modern Jewish Cultures (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: Below the Line: The Feuilleton & Modern Jewish Cultures
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Author: Naomi Brenner
Author: Matthew Handelman
Author: Julia Falkovitch-Khain
Abstract: “Below the Line” provides open-access resources for those interested in learning more about the feuilleton and its importance in the formation of modern Jewish cultures. Started in 2017, the project aims to foster conversation about and research into the feuilleton as a historical forum that attracted many different types of writing, writers, and readers. This site is intended for the general public, including educators, students, and scholars. We hope you will take a look at the original texts, get a sense of how the feuilleton appeared when it was first published, and read through the English translations — all with an eye toward what the feuilleton can tell us about the formation of modern Jewish cultures and new media landscapes today.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://feuilletonproject.org/
Primary URL Description: Primary website
Access Model: Open Access

Jewish Feuilletons in and beyond the American Press (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Jewish Feuilletons in and beyond the American Press
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Author: Naomi Brenner
Author: Matthew Handelman
Abstract: Our first online workshop brought together two scholars working on translation and multilingual feuilleton texts, one focusing on the American press in New York and the other on the Hebrew press in Palestine. Speakers provided contextual information on their text and offered a brief interpretation of the text. Question and answer as well as open discussion followed the talks with the goal of building connections to other contexts and texts within the study of modern Jewish cultures. Text materials, both in original and in partial translation, were available a week prior to the event.
Date Range: September 30, 2020
Location: Zoom
Primary URL: https://feuilletonproject.org/s/below-the-line/page/2020-09_workshop
Primary URL Description: Conference program

AJS Seminar "The Feuilleton Between Culture and Politics" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: AJS Seminar "The Feuilleton Between Culture and Politics"
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Author: Naomi Brenner
Author: Matthew Handelman
Abstract: This seminar examined the feuilleton as a critical space for Jewish political debate, social commentary, and literary innovation. A novel form of urban literature and journalism, the feuilleton was popular in the daily press across the globe. Participants explored the feuilleton as the emerging forum for Kulturpolitik, cultural politics, in German, Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish. Culture and cultural criticism became a dynamic sphere in which individual authors and thinkers could forward their own political and social goals. Feuilletons were a key site for cultural politics and provided ways for Jewish writers to participate in larger Jewish debates and intervene in national debates from which they were otherwise excluded. As politics continue to be played out over new social and cultural media, understanding the origins of cultural politics—and its connection to Jewish authors and thinkers—seems one of the most pressing cultural issues of our age.
Date Range: December 13-17, 2020
Location: Conference of Association for Jewish Studies (Zoom)
Primary URL: https://feuilletonproject.org/s/below-the-line/page/2020-12_seminar
Primary URL Description: Panel website

1930s Feuilletons: Salonica and Berlin (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: 1930s Feuilletons: Salonica and Berlin
Author: This online workshop featured two scholars who examined feuilletons from the 1930s in Berlin and Sal
Author: Shachar Pinsker
Author: Naomi Brenner
Author: Matthew Handelman
Abstract: This online workshop featured two scholars who examined feuilletons from the 1930s in Berlin and Salonica. Speakers provided contextual information on their text and offered a brief interpretation of the text. Question and answer as well as open discussion followed the talks with the goal of building connections to other contexts and texts within the study of modern Jewish cultures. Text materials, both in original and in partial translation, were available a week prior to the event.
Date Range: March 3, 2021
Location: Zoom
Primary URL: https://feuilletonproject.org/s/below-the-line/page/2021-03_workshop

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