The shtetl: new evaluations Introduction Samuel Kassow The importance of demography and patterns of settlement for an understanding of the Jewish experience in East Central Europe Gershon David Hundert A shtetl with a yeshiva : the case of Volozhin Immanuel Etkes Rebbetzins wonder children and the emergence of the dynastic principle in Hasidism Nehemia Polen Two Jews three opinions: politics in the shtetl at the turn of the twentieth century Henry Abramson The shtetl in Poland 1914 1918 Konrad Zieliński The shtetl in interwar Poland Samuel Kassow Looking at the Yiddish landscape : representation in nineteenth century Hasidic and Maskilic literature Jeremy Dauber Imagined geography : the shtetl myth and reality Israel Bartal Gender and the disintegration of the shtetl in modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature Naomi Seidman Rediscovering the shtetl as a new reality : David Bergelson and Itsik Kipnis Mikhail Krutikov Agnons synthetic shtetl Arnold J. Band The image of the shtetl in contemporary Polish fiction Katarzyna Wiecławska Sarny and Rokitno in the Holocaust : a case study of two townships in Wolyn (Volhynia) Yehuda Bauer The world of the shtetl Elie Wiesel