Boswell Book Company • 2559 N. Downer Avenue • FREE & open to the public Debra Caplan is Assistant Professor of Theater at Baruch College, CUNY, and is April 4TH, 7PM also a director, dramaturg, and theater trans- lator. With Joel Berkowitz, she co-founded Celebrating Two Recent Books by Members the Digital Yiddish Theatre of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project Project (yiddishstage.org), a research collective that applies digital humanities tools to the Debra Caplan •Yiddish Empire study of Yiddish theater. Her current book project is a new & Alyssa Quint •The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater biography of Molly Picon. in conversation with Joel Berkowitz Alyssa Quint is Senior Scholar at the During World War I, a motley group of amateurs, refugees, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in and out-of-work actors revolutionized the Yiddish stage. New York City. She is the co-editor of Achieving unlikely success, the Vilna Troupe would go on Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon and a forthcoming to earn the attention of theatergoers worldwide. Yiddish two-volume collection of Empire tells the story of how these performers became the plays, essays, and documents interwar equivalent of a viral sensation. called Women on the Yiddish Stage. She is currently curat- The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater focuses on the ing an online museum to be life and work of Avrom Goldfaden, one of the most colorful launched by YIVO in 2020. figuresin the history of the Yiddish stage. Quint explores how the actors who performed his plays absorbed theater into their everyday lives, and paints a vivid picture of Jewish religion, politics, and daily life in late Imperial Russia. CO-SPONSORS Boswell Book Company, the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project, UWM’s Center for 21st Century Studies, Russian and East European Studies Program, and Department of History.