HIST 386WShtetl Photography

Catalog

We Were This Once: Shtetl Photography, Family Memory and Ethnic Self-Representation The advent of accessible and affordable forms of photographic technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has transformed the ways that people record and remember their own lives. In quick measure, vernacular forms of photography, such as the formal studio picture, or the "selfie," graced the walls of ordinary homes or were pasted into family albums. These repositories of private memory will be the focus of our study in class, as we think through the implications of this once novel cultural artifact, and its transformative effect on individual and collective notions of visual self-representation. With this last theme in mind, we will also consider the broader cultural and social history of photography in relation to Yiddish (Jewish Eastern European) and other comparable urban minority societies, especially from an American perspective.