New Visions, Lost Worlds: The Jewish Jester on a Soviet Stage

Abstract

My presentation explores the tragic-comical figure of the Badhkn [“wedding jester”] as a controversial icon of Ashkenazic-Jewish theater and comedy. I show how Marc Chagall’s polemical elevation of the Badhkn to an allegory of Jewish theater in 1921 underscored the conflicts underlying Russian-Jewish emancipation movements, and also offered a new vision of Jewish Renaissance, anchored in a vanished world.

Presenter Biography
Maryclaire Koch is finalizing her PhD in Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo Art Department and is a lecturer in Art History at Fredonia University. Her dissertation "Identity as Phantasm: A Diasporic Modernism" explores the broad spectrum of Diasporic identities via the work of Jewish artists Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). The dissertation was funded by the Ruth and Isadore Bob Foundation in Jewish Studies (2017-18) and the U.B. Humanities Institute Advanced PhD Fellowship (2018-19), and is projected for defense in July 2019.