Dr. Les Field will present the Snead Wertheim Endowed Lecture: Intercultural Ethnography: The Work of Uriah Katzenelenbogen in Lithuania During the Inter-War Period

The folkloric, literary, scholarly and political ideas of a Lithuanian Jewish man named Uriah Katzenelenbogen were actively promoted through social, artistic and cultural interculturalism during the interwar period in Lithuania. Katzenelenbogen was an ethnographer of his neighbors, the Lithuanian people, as part of his efforts to build bridges between peoples, and to cultivate a multi-ethic nation after Lithuania became an independent republic after World War I.  I illustrate his work by comparing the uses of folklore in Europe and in Latin America, on the one hand, and contextualizing the distinctive character of his ethnographic work on the other.  In this way, I re-examine alternative political and cultural ideas current among Jews of the early 20^th century.

Uriah Katzenelenbogen, a Lithuanian Jewish ethnographer in the interwar republic, used folklore, literature, and scholarship to foster intercultural dialogue and advocate for a multiethnic Lithuanian nation after World War I. By comparing European and Latin American uses of folklore and situating his distinctive ethnographic work, this study revisits alternative Jewish political and cultural visions of the early twentieth century.