David Shneer, Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History and Professor of History, Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, committed to using his sabbatical to stretch his scholarly self in new directions. To that end, this fall, he presented his book, Lin Jaldati: Trümmerfrau der Seele, in Berlin at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in a talk about the book in German. Click here to hear the talk [link forthcoming]. He also is returning to his musical roots, performing “Art is My Weapon: The Life and Work of Lin Jaldati,” a music, spoken word, visual experience that premiered at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Boston this December. Click here to see excerpts of the presentation. [link forthcoming]
In addition, Shneer published two peer-reviewed articles: “Yiddish Music and East German Antifascism: Lin Jaldati, Postwar Jewish Culture, and the Cold War,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Summer 2015: 1-28, and “Documenting the Ambivalent Empire: Soviet Jewish Photographers, Birobidzhan, and the Far East,” in Michael Brenner, Martin Schulze Wessel, and Franziska Davies, eds., Jews and Muslims in the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union (Munich: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht, 2015): 141-164.
He also gave the keynote address, “Why Teach Genocide?" at the inaugural teachers’ conference for Partners in Action for Genocide and Holocaust Education in October.
In his spare time, he has been overseeing the Yiddish DILS course at CU Boulder, and he welcomes beginners interested in learning the 1000-year old vernacular language of European Jews.