News

German & Yiddish Undergraduate Student Awards Recipients 2024/25

Posted on February 2, 2026

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024–25 Undergraduate In-Course Student Awards in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. These awards recognize undergraduate students for their strong academic performance and continued excellence in their studies while enrolled in the program. We congratulate all recipients on their achievements and thank them for their hard work and commitment. Below is the list of award recipients for the 2024–25 academic year. Award Name Recipient NameSara Friede-Miransky Memorial Bursary in Yiddish StudiesKatherine BrownFania and Aron Fainer Prize in YiddishEric JadidzadehThe Anne (Medres) Glass Memorial Scholarship in YiddishPetra Biddle-GottesmanThe Percy Matenko Scholarship in YiddishEli KatzThe Hermann Boeschenstein Memorial ScholarshipJulien LevitThe Prize of the Ambassador of Switzerland to CanadaMaris Rice-Cameron Congratulations to all award recipients on their well-deserved achievements! Read More »

Publication of a New Book by Professor Willi Goetschel

Posted on January 22, 2026

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 »

Academic Presentation by Jacob Hermant | 4pm, November 27, 2025

Posted on October 17, 2025

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 »

Kaffeestunde Winter 2026

Posted on January 9, 2026

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 »