Holocaust Testimonies in Yiddish Language Research and Pedagogy - Isaac L. Bleaman

The Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe (CSYE) is an Open Access digital language archive sourced from hundreds of video-recorded interviews with Holocaust survivors from the USC Shoah Foundation. The materials contained in the corpus are a testament to the social and linguistic diversity of Yiddish-speaking Jewish society and an invaluable resource for linguistic research, Yiddish language instruction, and Holocaust education and commemoration. In this talk, I preview the resources in the CSYE, describe the process of corpus development, and discuss applications in language research, pedagogy, and revitalization.

Isaac L. Bleaman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and an affiliate of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include sociolinguistic variation and minority language maintenance. He addresses these broad areas by analyzing how individuals and communities speak and write in Yiddish. He recently received a 5-year CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a corpus of conversational Yiddish using archival Holocaust survivor testimonies. Bleaman holds a PhD and MA in Linguistics from New York University, an MSt in Yiddish Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Linguistics and Comparative Literature from Stanford University.

Monday, February 24, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM

Holocaust Testimonies in Yiddish Language Research and Pedagogy
Michael and Irene Ross Program in Yiddish Studies

Isaac L. Bleaman (UC Berkeley)

Moderated by Todd Presner (UCLA)