Scholarly hybrid meeting featuring a talk on Jewish writing between Yugoslavia and Israel.
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Scholarly hybrid meeting featuring a talk on Jewish writing between Yugoslavia and Israel.
We invite you to the next academic meeting of the Department of Literary Studies and Cultural Studies at IS PAN.
📅 10 February 2026, Tuesday, 11:00–13:00
🏛️ Mode: hybrid — Institute of Slavic Studies PAN, ul. Jaracza 1 (5th floor) and online on the Zoom platform.
✉️ People from outside the Institute who would like to participate online can receive the meeting link via the secretariat: sekretariat@ispan.edu.pl
📝 Please register with the Institute secretariat by 9 February 2026 if you wish to attend in person.
At the next meeting Dr Katarzyna Taczyńska will present a paper titled “Being a Yugoslav Woman in Israel. Jewish creativity at the junction of Yugoslavia and Israel.”
Description:
The aim of the paper is to present a book chapter dedicated to two female writers whose lives and work took place at the junction of Yugoslavia and Israel. The history of Miriam Steiner Aviezer (1935–) stands out as a rare case in which Jewish identity is clearly articulated and constitutes a central element of her work and life choices. Steiner Aviezer was born in Karlovac (Croatia). As a child she was imprisoned in concentration camps in Croatia and Italy, and later joined the partisan movement with her parents. After World War II she was involved in preserving Jewish culture in Yugoslavia; she served as a caregiver and educator during children’s summer trips to the Adriatic. In 1971 she emigrated to Israel and worked, among other places, at the Yad Vashem institute.
Dina Katan Ben Zion (1937–2023), born in Sarajevo, was as a child sent to Palestine; after the war she briefly stayed in Yugoslavia, and in 1949 emigrated to Israel with her parents. From the 1980s she worked as a translator and researcher of literature in Serbian and Croatian, while also publishing poems in Hebrew. Her work reflects struggles with a sense of linguistic belonging and the experience of living between languages and cultures.
In the chapter Dr Taczyńska analyzes texts created both in the languages of the former Yugoslav countries (Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian) and in Hebrew. She emphasizes the role of language and the authors’ struggles related to choosing a medium of expression, as well as their positions as cultural actors mediating between the country of origin and the country of settlement. The proposed interpretation reveals circles of cooperation that developed between Yugoslavia and Israel.
Katarzyna Taczyńska – a Balkanist, Judaist and Slavist. Assistant professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies PAN. Head of the project “Jewish, Balkan, Female: The Literature of Balkan Jewish Women as a Minority Experience” (Opus NCN, no. 2022/47/B/HS2/00584). Author of a monograph and numerous scholarly articles. In 2026 she will conduct research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Manya Friedman Memorial Fellow.
Scholarly hybrid meeting featuring a talk on Jewish writing between Yugoslavia and Israel.
