The University of Texas at Austin

Faculty Member, Middle Eastern Studies

Liberal Arts

About

As a comparatist, I believe that a theoretical engagement of Hebrew literature draws it into a transnational conversation and makes it relevant beyond its immediate linguistic and geographic scope. At the same time, I endeavor in my work to acknowledge Hebrew literature's idiosyncrasies -- in particular its strange, tense, and fascinating position as both a national literature and, historically, as an alternative homeland in and of itself.

My forthcoming book, Place and Ideology in Contemporary Hebrew Literature (Syracuse University Press), approaches the question of place in Israeli literature from a cultural geography perspective to argue for the significance of a particular extra-national spatial dynamic in Israeli identity. Analyzing literary representations of "vernacular places" -- the lived places of everyday experience, such as balconies, buses, and gardens -- Place and Ideology expands the Israeli experience of place beyond its normative cultural, territorial, and ethnic boundaries to propose an understanding of Israeli identity as de-centered and diverse. Moreover, it examines the broader social and cultural implication of this development: a more inclusive re-orientation of Israeli identity, with its plurality of experiences and histories, as Middle Eastern, rather than as primarily European-Jewish nationalist.