Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew and Jewish Culture
About
My research interests include twentieth-century postwar Hebrew and Yiddish literature, German Jewish thought, translation theory, and visual culture. My forthcoming book, Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters, explores the mass appeal of golem tales concerning artificial creation in the German-speaking world around World War I, as well as the ongoing association of golem figures with war technologies in American and Israeli cultures. Drawing on archival sources and print media, the book shows how the golem became both a metaphor for modern war and its weapons and—often at the same time—a powerful reminder of human vulnerability and mortality.
Book Publications:
My first book, Golem: Modern Wars and Their Monsters (NYU Press, 2016), explores the mass appeal of golem tales concerning artificial creation in the German-speaking world around World War I, as well as the ongoing association of golem figures with war technologies in American and Israeli cultures. The book was awarded the 2017 Jordan Schnitzer Book Prize of the AJS and received Honorable Mention for the Salo Baron AAJR First Book Prize.
My forthcoming book, Golem, How He Came into the World (Camden House German Film Classics, 2020) is a detailed study of Paul Wegener’s 1920 film, situating it in the cultural, historical, and social contexts of post-World War I Germany.
Selected Article Publications:
“Witnessing Dying in the Tongue of Revival: Shaul Tchernikhovsky’s World War I Poetry.” Yearbook of the Simon Dubnow Institute. Volume 13, 2014. 177-192.
“Translation on the Margins: Avraham Ben Yitzhak and Yoel Hoffmann.” The Journal of Jewish Identities. Volume 7:1, 2014. 109-128.
“A Poetics of Statelessness: Avraham Ben Yitzhak after World War I.” Naharaim: Journal of German Jewish Literature and Cultural History. Volume 7:1-2, 2013. 111-130.
“S. Y. Agnon’s German Consecration and the ‘Miracle’ of Hebrew Letters.” Prooftexts. Volume 33:1, 2013. 48-75.
“Reading Camera Lucida in Gaza: Ronit Matalon’s Photographic Travels.” Comparative Literature. Volume 65:2, 2013. 200-219.
Selected Courses:
“Jewish Film: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality” (Judaic 250 / SAC 250 / NES 250)
“The Jewish Graphic Novel” (Judaic 320 / AMCULT 320)
“Ethnicity in Israeli Literature and Culture” (Hebrew 404)
“The Sacred, the Foreign, and the Profane in (Jewish) Language” (Graduate seminar)
Affiliation(s):
- Near Eastern Studies, Judaic Studies, Comparative Literature, Germanic Languages and Literatures
