This talk examines the role of Jewish folk traditions and memory in the picture books of the late Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), with special attention to Sendak’s handling of landscape and natural elements. Sendak’s own biography reflects a move in the 1970s from the urban spaces of Brooklyn and Manhattan to the forested landscape of Ridgefield, Connecticut. His work speaks to the experience of first-generation children of immigrants in early twentieth-century America, drawing on a Yiddish-inflected ...

This talk examines the comparative representations of the Mizrahi immigrant and the Holocaust refugee through the motif of the child immigrant to Israel in the mid-20th century through the work of Leah Goldberg (1911-1970). A prolific modernist poet, author, playwright, literary translator, and comparative literary critic who chaired the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Goldberg's focus upon dislocation and language in her work for both adults and children is informed ...