In the 2025-26 academic year, the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies is focusing on the theme of “Jews and Media” under the leadership of head fellows Shachar Pinsker, the University of Michigan and Olga Gershenson, the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In recent years, scholars of Jewish Studies have expanded beyond traditional textual analysis to encompass the study of various media forms, ranging from historical artifacts like manuscripts and scrolls to newspapers, magazines, recordings, film, television, and digital technologies. This theme year at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies will explore the intersection of Jewish and Media Studies and the relationships between Jews, Jewishness, Judaism, and media, both old and new.

We seek to understand the roles Jews have played in the production, distribution, and consumption of media throughout history, as well as to study the representation of Jews in various media, both traditional and digital. By including a wide range of media, we aim to examine the dynamic relationship between Jews and media, their impact on Jewish/non-Jewish relations, and their role in shaping concepts of Jewishness globally. We are interested in the evolving boundaries of religious traditions, ideas of belonging, migration, nationalism, capitalism, race, gender, and the transformation of Israel and the diaspora. 

 

The 2025-2026 Frankel fellows and their fields of research are:

Shachar Pinsker (Co-Head Fellow), University of Michigan, “Below the Line: Feuilletons, Jews, and Media”

Olga Gershenson (Co-Head Fellow), University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Judaism and Film.”

Nadya Bair, Hamilton College, “Myth Maker: Cornell Capa and the Reinvention of Documentary at the International Center of Photography (ICP)”

Eitan Bar-Yosef, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “Israeli Educational Television, 1966–1982: Broadcasting Israel in Transition”

Ayelet Brinn, Hartford University, “World War I, The Red Scare, and the Censorship of the American Yiddish Press”

Gilad Halpern, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “Dateline Jerusalem”

Matthew Handelman, Michigan State University, “The Invention of Cultural Politics: German-Jewish Intellectuals in the Age of Mass Media”

Erica Lehrer, Concordia University, Montreal, “‘Post-Jewish’ Objects and Mnemonic Mediation in Contemporary Poland”

Julian Levinson, University of Michigan, “Mediating Jewish Comedy”

Jeremiah Lockwood, University of California, Las Angeles, “Melody Like a Confession: A Cultural History of the Cantorial Gramophone Era”

Anna Narinskaya, Author, curator, filmmaker and activist, “Jewishness in Soviet media (1960s–1980s)”

Tamar Sella, University of North Texas, “Unsettled Sounds: The Critical Frame of Arab Jewish Musical Memory”

Uri Schreter, Harvard University, “Reverberations: Jewish Music in the LP Era”

Sigal Yona, Ghent University, “The Longue Durée of the Eden Cinema in Tel Aviv”

Anat Zeltser, Sapir College, “The History of Jewish/Israeli images through the Herzliya Studios”