PAPA CAN YOU QUEER ME:
​FUNNY GIRL, YENTL AND BARBRA
​VIA A QUEER LENS

​Growing up in Brooklyn, the Jewish singer-actor-comedienne Barbra Streisand burst onto the screen in Funny Girl (1968) with a performance that went on to enshrine a persona and catapult her to fame. Fifteen years later Streisand would produce, write, and step into the director's chair for the very first time with Yentl (1983). An adaptation of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, its heroine Yentl disguises herself as a man in order to study Torah. Whereas the short story can be read as a transgender narrative, the movie erases much of this gender-queerness by taking on more of a feminist approach. 
Can Yentl be read through a polyamorous gaze? Can Funny Girl trace something of the stakes for Jewish women's bodies? By examining Streisand's status as a camp and gay icon, we will argue the subjectivities of the Queer/Jew connection.