February 25, 2007

"The Media and the Messenger: Transforming the Cantor's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Jeffrey Shandler
March 9th
"The Media and the Messenger: Transforming the Cantor's Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction " Location: The Center for Jewish History
15 W. 16th St. New York City
Date: Friday, March 9, 2007
Time: 10:30 AM to Noon

Admission: This event is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society
and the American Society for Jewish Music
The Jewish Music Forum lecture series continues, with an investigation of the cantor's life, art, and spirituality as narrated through various modes of communication:
"The Media and the Messenger: Transforming the Cantor's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Presented by:
Dr. Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University
Respondents: Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University, and Dr. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University Co-sponsor: Working Group on Jews/Media/Religion at the Center for Religion and Media, New York University

In brief:
Jeffrey Shandler will discuss how American cantors' interactions with new media of the past century transformed their art and their stature as performers. Their engagement with sound recordings, sheet music, motion pictures, and radio and television broadcasting created new possibilities for cantors that tested the limits of their traditional role as shliah tsibur (communal messenger). Of special interest is how cantors have become subjects of mediations, especially in narratives in which the cantor's life and career figure as exemplary tales of the encounter of Jewish tradition with the challenges of modernity.

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Distinguished panel:

Dr. Jeffrey Shandler, a scholar of modern Jewish culture, is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. His publications include Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (2005), Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (2003), Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust (2002), and While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (1999).

Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor, Professor of Performance Studies, and Affiliated Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her publications include Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864-1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki) (1977); Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (1998); The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (edited with Jonathan Karp) (in press); and They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt) (in press).

Dr. Mark Slobin is a professor of music at Wesleyan University and past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology. His books include Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants and Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World, both of which received ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award, and Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan.

About the Jewish Music Forum:

The Forum is a colloquium in which invited lecturers present original research in a flexible format that is followed by response and open discussion. With the support of the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Music Forum, a project of the American Society for Jewish Music, launched its new series at the Center for Jewish History in the spring of 2005. The Jewish Music Forum is devoted to the study of Jewish music in all of its historical and contemporary diversity.

Posted by jmwc at February 25, 2007 05:06 PM