Call for Papers: Women and Jewish Poetry

The editors of Nashim invite proposals for articles on women and Jewish poetry, for Nashim no. 19 (Spring 2010), under the consulting editorship of Kathryn Hellerstein of the University of Pennsylvania.

In Jewish cultures, women have functioned as the muses, subjects, addressees and readers of poetry, considered the highest form of literature. From ancient times to the present day, Jewish women have also written poems, in both the sacred and the vernacular languages of Jewish life.

Few women poets found wide readership in their lifetimes, and most of their works survived in obscurity. Until relatively recently, too, this vast body of work was ignored as a topic of scholarship. Yet their poetry reveals much about the lives women led, their beliefs, thoughts, and what they read, as well as about the lives of the men and children among whom they lived. They wrote and published in Jewish languages—Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew among them—as well as in the languages of the wider world—including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Persian.

Nashim 19 seeks articles on poetry written by, for and/or about Jewish women across languages, cultures and historical periods. Our definition of poetry includes literary, folk, popular and religious genres—lyric poems, love poems, prayers, hymns, lullabies, epics, modernist poems.

Questions to be addressed may include but are not limited to the following: What is Jewish poetry? How does gender affect authorship in Jewish poetry? How do women poets write within Jewish and Gentile languages, genres and canons? What are the relationships between poetry written by Jewish women and the religious and ideological movements in Jewish history? Who are specific women poets, and why are they important? How does poetry composed expressly for a female audience differ from poetry intended for an audience of men or of both men and women in a Jewish context? How do women figure as the subjects of poems in the various Jewish traditions?

The editors of Nashim 19 may include a small section of previously unpublished translations into English of poems by Jewish women, and/or the previously unpublished works of little-known Jewish women poets of the past in English.

Proposals for submissions of up to 12,000 words, not previously published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, should be sent to Deborah Greniman, Managing Editor of Nashim, by February 1, 2009, by e-mail (preferably) to nashim@schechter.ac.il; or by fax to +972-3-7256592. Final date for submission of articles: May 1, 2009. All scholarly articles will be subject to peer review. Academic Editor of Nashim: Renée Levine Melammed.