70: Dancing and Jewish Modernity with Sonia Gollance

Jewish History Matters

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Sonia Gollance joins us to talk about her book It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity, an exciting new book which deals with the history of dance and modern Jewish culture.

Sonia Gollance is a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate in Yiddish Literature and Culture Studies at the University of Vienna. In September, she will join the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London as Lecturer in Yiddish. Gollance is also the Managing Editor of Plotting Yiddish Drama, an initiative of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project.

• Purchase It Could Lead to Dancing on Amazon
• Read an excerpt from It Could Lead to Dancing

It Could Lead to Dancing really is such an exciting approach to thinking about modern Jewish culture. Listen in as we discuss how social dancing was both an important part of Jewish cultural history and also as a great way to think about all sorts of important themes in modern Jewish history, both in Europe and the United States—whether we are talking about mobility, both on the dance floor and social mobility on a larger scale, or thinking about gender, or the practical social spaces where Jews negotiated their participation in wider society.