Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto

All students enrolled in Yiddish courses (both language and topic courses) are automatically eligible for generous scholarships and awards administered by the German Department. Historically, over 70 percent of Yiddish students have received one or more awards after completing one year of Yiddish study. Award NameAward DetailsBella and Solomon Shek Award in Yiddish StudiesBy-Application awardEstablished through generous donations from the family of the late Solomon Isaac Shek. To be awarded to an outstanding student essay on a Yiddish scholar, humanistic, and progressive writer, like Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Mendele Mocher Sforim, or those who came after them in the Americas and Europe. Fania and Aron Fainer Prize in YiddishIn-Class awardEstablished through the gifts from friends and family of Fania and Aron Fainer, on their 50th wedding anniversary. Awarded to a student in Yiddish language who will continue in the study of Yiddish at the undergraduate level or at the graduate level. Financial need will be considered.Sara Friede-Miransky Memorial Bursary in Yiddish StudiesIn-Class awardEstablished by the donations from the friends and family of Sara Friede-Miransky. Awarded to a student in a Yiddish language or literature course on the basis of financial need.  Academic merit will also be considered.The Anne (Medres) Glass ... Read More »

Join us for Lunch & Connect: German and Yiddish Open House, a fair-style event showcasing the programs and opportunities offered by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. The Open House will feature multiple table stations where you can explore our academic programs, international opportunities, and student experiences. Faculty members, staff, and students who have previously participated in these programs will be on hand to share detailed information and answer your questions. Complimentary pizza, drinks, and Black Forest cake will be available throughout the event! Date: Thursday, January 29Time: 1–4 PMLocation: Romero Room, Loretto College Residence, 1st Floor, 70 St. Mary Street Featured Booths German Undergraduate StudiesGerman Graduate StudiesYiddish StudiesiPRAKTIKUM Internship ProgramSummer Abroad CoursesDAAD Programs More details about each booth can be found in the event flyer. Questions about German and Yiddish Studies are welcome, even if they are not specifically listed. Everyone is warmly invited to stop by, connect with our community, enjoy some food, and spend a pleasant afternoon with us! Read More »

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new book by Professor Willi Goetschel, Difference and Alterity in La Boétie, Montaigne, Spinoza and Mendelssohn. This study redirects our attention to a group of thinkers whose project of rethinking difference and alterity assumes new critical significance at the current juncture. Spanning from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, the interventions of La Boétie, Montaigne, Spinoza and Mendelssohn are not just history, albeit one problematically assimilated to canonical views, but offer new resources for moving past the politics of tolerance, charity, and recognition. Rather, these thinkers argue for an understanding of otherness that renegotiates the terms of difference and alterity more radically as the conditions of our own existence. From La Boétie’s exposure of ‘voluntary servitude’ as the mechanism behind the tyranny of despotic authority that ultimately rests on a pyramid scheme of dependency sustained solely by the agreement of those who willingly submit, to Montaigne, Spinoza, and Mendelssohn, these thinkers argue for the critical importance of the deep constitutive nexus between self and other, identity, difference, and otherness. Published by Edinburgh University Press, the book is now available. Visit this site for more information. Read More »

Deadline extended to Thursday, January 15th, 2026 Read More »

You are warmly invited to an academic presentation by Jacob Hermant, PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the collaborative program with the Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Lecture Title:Reading Diasporism in Yiddish Literary HistoryDate: Thursday, November 27, 2025Time: 4:00-6:00 PMLocation: Department Library, Room 323, 3rd Floor, Odette Hall About the Lecture: Jacob’s dissertation looks at nineteenth-century Yiddish literature and early twentieth-century radical Jewish politics in an attempt to locate and reveal an intellectual lineage between the two movements. The first wave of modern Yiddish literature, as part of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), is often read as didactic and moralistic, aiming to educate and modernize the Jewish population of Eastern Europe in order to integrate into modern European life and culture, and away from perceived superstition and backwardness, especially with regard to the use of Yiddish as a vernacular. While this was certainly the goal of many authors, a close reading of the period’s Yiddish literary texts can highlight momentary breaks that reveal a far more complicated and nuanced relationship between the Jewish intelligentsia and folk, one which finds both utility and positive affective connections in traditional Jewish life, as well as anticipating threads of ... Read More »

Dear undergraduate and graduate students, staff, and faculty of the German Department: I’d like to invite all of you to our Kaffeestunde (coffee hour), the German Department’s social gathering of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students. Let’s meet and mingle over coffee, tea and Keksen for an informal chat in German. The Kaffeestunde will take place every first Thursday of the month at 1-2pm, and every third Friday of the month from 2-3pm in the Lounge of the German Department, Odette Hall 301. Please note that due to Reading Week (February 17–20), the Kaffeestunde originally scheduled for February 20 has been moved to February 13. 📅 Winter 2026 Dates: January 16, 2:00–3:00 PMFebruary 5, 1:00–2:00 PMFebruary 13, 2:00–3:00 PMMarch 5, 1:00–2:00 PMMarch 20, 2:00–3:00 PMApril 2, 1:00–2:00 PM 📍 Location:Lounge, 3rd Floor, Odette Hall *Please help us protect the environment and bring your own reusable cup* Stefan SoldovieriChair Read More »

Application Deadline: Thursday, December 18, 2025 Read More »

by Walker Horsfall I began teaching at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Fall 2022 as a Lecturer, then secured an appointed an Assistant Professor the following year. I am currently working on a monograph that examines the many and creative ways in which science and natural philosophy, especially astronomy, geology, and medicine, informed the form, content, and function of Middle High German religious and narrative poetry. At Illinois, I have had fortunate occasion to offer several courses on medieval topics, including on Norse mythology, the Icelandic saga tradition, and the history of sexuality in premodern literature. But I have also had the lovely opportunity to teach our modern German language courses, for which I am empowered by and grateful to experience gained teaching for the German department at UofT. In fact, I have found much in common between the German departments at Illinois and Toronto. For example, this past February, our department, together with the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University of Illinois, hosted a book launch and discussion for my colleague Anke Pinkert’s new publication, Remembering 1989: Future Archives of Public Protest. Earlier that particular morning, I happened to have had a meeting that ... Read More »

New Book on Plurilingualism by Professor Enrica Piccardo  Our department is wonderfully enriched by the contributions of affiliate faculty whose expertise in cognate units such as history, Jewish Studies, and Sociology supports the interdisciplinary researches of our doctoral students. One such scholar is Enrica Piccardo, Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education in the Languages and Literacies Education Program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She serves as Director of the Centre for Educational Research in Languages and Literacies and also as distinguished Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) at the Université Grenoble-Alpes (France). Her internationally recognized research is centred around Second/Foreign Language learning and teaching, plurilingualism and mediation, the impact of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) on language teaching and assessment, complexity theories, and creativity in language acquisition. Together with collaborator Le Chen, she recently published the volume Autoethnographies of Plurilingualism: Voices of the Selves (Routledge, 2024) which offers a theoretically grounded and methodologically innovative examination of the complex trajectories and identities of plurilingual speakers. Through a rich collection of personal narratives, the volume invites readers to witness how language users navigate, negotiate, and reimagine their linguistic repertoires, thus transcending conventional notions of language competence. ... Read More »

The origin of this book lies in pre-Covid times, in 2019, when graduate students in the Centre for Comparative Literature organized a conference called Timepieces. The idea was to investigate how humans are defined in and by time, both abstractly, as mortal creatures with internal clocks, and materially, through the pieces that we have used throughout history to mark time. The students asked me to offer the keynote lecture, and I presented on “Modern Times.” The conference was a thrilling intellectual experience, featuring speakers from across North America and Europe. The conference’s energy seemed too vital for us to let it go up in smoke, so the two of the main organizers, Teresa Valentini and Angela Weiser, approached me about producing a volume together. They brought endless vitality to the project, and I contributed my experience with publishing. At this point in my career, it felt meaningful to share not only intellectual insights but also practical ones: How do you publish a book, from beginning to end? We approached Len Husband, an acquisitions editor at the University of Toronto Press, who expressed interest. Then we began the long process of selecting the best papers from the conference, approaching the authors, ... Read More »