Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) is the literary language of the descendents of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Many of us are familiar with the Sephardic song tradition, but there is also a vast literature in Ladino that ranges from medieval religious texts to modern novels. This literature was produced by diverse spectrum of Sephardic communities, from very assimilated converts writing in Italy and Holland who fled Spain to return to Judaism in the 1500s and 1600s, to Ottoman Jews who still preserved a sense of ‘Spanish-ness’ hundreds of years after the expulsion, to Sephardic immigrants to New York who published newspapers and humor magazines in Ladino between the wars. In this talk Wacks will give an overview of Ladino literature from 1492 to the twentieth century in light of its historical and social contexts.

1. 500 Years of Ladino Literature: an overview David A. Wacks Associate Professor of Spanish University of Oregon http://rl.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/profiles/wacks/index.php

6. Coplas de la muerte

9. Ottoman diaspora

33. Bella Starr