2022 Phillip R. Certain – Gary D. Sandefur Letters & Science Distinguished Faculty Award recipient
Sunny Yudkoff is an Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies, and also directs the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture. She researches and teaches in the fields of Yiddish literature, Jewish American culture, and the medical humanities. Her first book, “Tubercular Capital: Illness and the Conditions of Modern Jewish Writing,” was published by the Stanford University Press (2019). She is currently at work on her second monograph, entitled “Against Jewish Humor: Toward a Theory of Yiddish Joy.”
A word from Jolanda Vanderwal Taylor, Chair of German, Nordic, and Slavic+:
Professor Yudkoff came to Madison in 2016. Her award-winning book, “Tubercular Capital: Illness and the Conditions of Modern Jewish Writing,” is a brilliant synthesis of literary analysis, medical humanities and Jewish Studies. An equally brilliant teacher, she has started a project on Yiddish joy, adapting Ahmed’s figure of the “kill-joy.”