Women of Valour Seminar

In newspapers across the United States, Canada, and England, recent articles have revealed crimes against modernity with stories about local Orthodox Jewish women: women who are sent to the back of the bus; women who are made invisible in burqa-like costume; women who are banned from driving. Filmmakers like Québécois director, Maxime Giroux, whose Félix et Meira won best Canadian film at the 2014 Toronto Film Festival and is Canada’s submission for the “best foreign-language film” category for the 2016 Academy Awards, have picked up on this popular fixation on Orthodox women, and “off-the-derech” memoirs—written by people (primarily women) who left Orthodoxy—have been published at an astonishing rate of late, leading Tablet Magazine to call them “New York publishing’s hottest new trend” last year. In this seminar, I will discuss this cultural fascination with Orthodox women and suggest that a countermovement is taking place with a small but growing body of works written by Orthodox women—novels, short stories, films—that is attempting to reframe the place and power of Orthodox women in their own communities and beyond.