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Folklore played a decisive role in the development of Romantic nationalism and was the chief catalyst for the development of the aesthetics of nationalization. It was also the point of connection between anthropological and aesthetics notions of culture. Folklore was no less central to the processes of modernization, nationalization, and secularization among European Jews despite the conceptual and social instability surrounding the status of Jews as political subjects and as a "folk." This course will examine folklore in the literature, music, and visual art of Yiddish-speaking European Jews, in order to understand the aesthetic and political terrain on which identity in Europe was contested in the decades around 1900. Readings and discussion in Yiddish.