Translating the Jewish Freud: A New Book Conversation with Author Naomi Seidman
Please join us for a special CJS event featuring a conversation with author Naomi Seidman on her new book Translating the Jewish Freud: Psychoanalysis in Hebrew and Yiddish (Stanford University Press, 2024).
There is an academic cottage industry on the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought. This book takes a different approach, turning its gaze not on Freud but rather on those who seek out his concealed Jewishness. What is it that propels the scholarly aim to show Freud in a Jewish light? Naomi Seidman explores attempts to "touch" Freud (and other famous Jews) through Jewish languages, seeking out his Hebrew name or evidence that he knew some Yiddish. Tracing a history of this drive to bring Freud into Jewish range, Seidman also charts Freud's responses to (and jokes about) this desire. More specifically, she reads the reception and translation of Freud in Hebrew and Yiddish as instances of the desire to touch, feel, "rescue," and connect with the famous Professor from Vienna.
Purchase the book on the Stanford University Press website and use code SEIDMAN20 for 20% off!
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Refreshments and snacks will be provided for those who attend in-person.
Authors:
Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, and a National Jewish Book Award in 2019. Her writings on translation include the 2006 Faithful Renderings: Jewish—Christian Difference and the Politics of Difference. Her podcast, "The Heretic in the House," was released in November 2022.
Translating the Jewish Freud (2024), her fifth book, was released by Stanford University Press in June.