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Israel Studies Seminar: Perspectives on Israel.
During this academic year, the Israel Studies Seminar will explore what it means to widen the horizons of conventional discourse about Israel by focusing on various perspectives of Israel.
The seminar’s objective is to situate Israel within broader contexts, including thematic, theoretical, methodological, epistemological, and geo-strategical. Our speakers this year are invited to offer views of Israel from the socio-political or historical vantage points of various traditions, groups, cultures and states, or from certain epistemological perspectives. We hope that by doing so we will be able to illuminate topics that may be otherwise neglected in the field of Israel studies, but are nevertheless crucial for understanding Israeli and Middle Eastern politics at large.
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| # | Episode Title | Description | People | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Creative Commons | Tamar Calahorra, Competition between Members of Parliament and Governmental ministries on Policy Outcomes through Legislation – Israel as a Test case | Dr. Calahorra studies some dramatic changes in the ways legislation is conducted in Israel | Tamar Calahorra | 03 Dec 2019 |
| 2 | Creative Commons | Nancy Hawker - Palestinian multilingualism: A perfectly normal adaptation to colonialism, conflict and late capitalism | Nancy Hawker (The Aga Khan University) considers the developing place of Arabic in official nation-statist platforms in Israel | Nancy Hawker | 27 Nov 2019 |
| 3 | Creative Commons | Yoav Ronel - 'Love, Zionism and Melancholy in the Prose of Micha Yosef Berdichevsky' | Yoav Ronel (Bezalel and BGU) considers representations of a melancholic national and subjective desire in the prose of Micha Yosef Berdichevsky (1865-1921) | Yoav Ronnel | 20 Nov 2019 |
| 4 | Creative Commons | Avihu Shoshana - 'Nocturnal Inequality: Ethnographies of Social Selection and Waiting in Line for Night Clubs in Tel-Aviv' | Avihu Shoshana (Haifa University) discusses findings from his ethnography of social selection in Israeli night-clubs. | Avihu Shoshana | 13 Nov 2019 |
| 5 | Creative Commons | Jonathan Leslie - Fear and Insecurity: Competing Narratives of the Iran-Israel Relationship | Jonathan Leslie considers the history of Iran's "becoming" and existential threat in Israel | Jonathan Leslie | 06 Nov 2019 |
| 6 | Moriel Ram, 'A tale of sand and snow: Bar-Lev line and the Hermon ski site as material fantasies' | Moriel Ram (SOAS) discusses how sand and snow produce potent imageries and physical realities in Israeli political culture. | Moriel Ram | 05 Nov 2019 | |
| 7 | Creative Commons | The Folly of Secularism Dialogues on the theopolitics of the nation-state: Israel in a wider context. Session 3: Israel: a dialogue between Yehouda Shenhav (Tel Aviv) and Yaacov Yadgar (Oxford) | Yehouda Shenhav and Yaacov Yadgar discuss the uses and misuses of a discourse on “Judaism” in Israel. Session 3 in a series of three. | Yehouda Shenhav, Yuval Evri, Yaacov Yadgar | 03 Apr 2019 |
| 8 | Creative Commons | The Folly of Secularism Dialogues on the theopolitics of the nation-state: Israel in a wider context. Session 2: Liberalism and Secularism: a dialogue between Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Northwestern) and Yolanda Jansen (Amsterdam) | Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Yolande Jansen discuss the notion of the “secular,” liberal politics of the nation-state. Session 2 in a series of three | Elisabeth Shakman Hurd, Yolande Jansen | 03 Apr 2019 |
| 9 | Creative Commons | The Folly of Secularism Dialogues on the theopolitics of the nation-state: Israel in a wider context. Session 1 Religion and Politics: a dialogue between William Cavanaugh (DePaul) and Timothy Fitzgerald (Centre for Critical Research on Religion) | Timothy Fitzgerald and William Cavanaugh discuss the politics and history of the conceptual duality and its current usages. First session in a series of three | Timothy Fitzgerald, William Cavanaugh | 03 Apr 2019 |
| 10 | Creative Commons | Avner Offer: Quality of Life and Well-being in Israel Today | Avner offer discusses how to measure -- and how to understand the measurements -- of quality of life and well-being in Israel. | Avner Offer | 06 Mar 2019 |
| 11 | Creative Commons | Eyal Chowers - The emerging notion of sovereignty in contemporary Israel | Eyal Chowers considers Israeli democracy, liberalism, and the emerging notion of sovereignty in the state | Eyal Chowers | 06 Mar 2019 |
| 12 | Ibrahim Khatib - Identity, Conflict perception and Reconciliation in the shadow of the Arab-Israeli conflict | Ibrahim Khatib discusses the correlations between identity, conflict perception, and willingness to reconcile. | Ibrahim Khatib | 27 Feb 2019 | |
| 13 | Guy Burton - Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1947' | How have rising power engaged with the Arab-Israeli conflict? What does this tell us about rising powers and conflict management as well as their behaviour in international politics more generally? | Guy Burton | 27 Feb 2019 | |
| 14 | Creative Commons | Menachem Klein - Abbas' Leadership in a State Postponed | Menachem Klein discusses the political biography and leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. | Menachem Klein | 06 Feb 2019 |
| 15 | Khaled Furani - Putting Israel on the Couch: A Palestinian challenge from within the Leviathan | Khaled Furani deconstruct sovereignty, and considers some alternatives. | Khaled Furani | 23 Jan 2019 | |
| 16 | Creative Commons | Netta Cohen - When climate takes command: Jewish-Zionist scientific approaches to climate in Palestine 1900-1948 | How did Zionist scientist see climate in Palestine? | Netta Cohen | 16 Jan 2019 |
| 17 | Creative Commons | Brian Klug - Defining antisemitism, demonizing Zionism, excoriating Corbyn: The current controversy over the left and the Jews | Brian Klug analyses the controversy around antisemitism in the Labour Party and the limits on the criticism of Zionism. | Brian Klug | 28 Nov 2018 |
| 18 | Orna Sasson-Levy - Gendered citizenship: The case of Women Breaking the Silence | Orna Sasson-Levy discusses the cast of women soldiers who decide to speak | Orna Sasson-Levy | 21 Nov 2018 | |
| 19 | Creative Commons | Adriana X Jacobs - A gift from Sinai: Translation and nation-building | Adriana Jacobs (Oxford) discusses the role of translation in the constitutive era of modern Hebrew literature. | Adriana X Jacobs | 16 Nov 2018 |
| 20 | David Tal - The making of alliance: The making and history of US-Israel relationships | David Tal discusses the making and history of US-Israel relationships. | David Tal | 16 Nov 2018 | |
| 21 | Yakov Rabkin - Israel: The Russian Connection | Yakov Rabkin (University of Montreal) discusses the roots of Israeli political culture in the Zionist beginnings in the Yiddish speaking regions of the Russian Empire. | Yakov Rabkin | 26 Oct 2018 | |
| 22 | Yaacov Yadgar - The Nation-State bill and the meaning of Israel’s Jewish identity | Yaacov Yadgar discusses the recently passed Basic-Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People, and discusses how it plays into Israel's Jewish Identity Crisis | Yaacov Yadgar | 10 Oct 2018 | |
| 23 | Creative Commons | Kfir Cohen - Israeli Literature as Global Literature | Kfir Cohen discusses Israeli literature as global literature (broadly defined) | Kfir Cohen | 25 Jun 2018 |
| 24 | Bashir Abu-Manneh - Habibi’s The Pessoptimist and 1948 | Bashir Abu-Manneh discusses Emile Habibi’s The Pessoptimist and 1948. | Bashir Abu-Manneh | 31 May 2018 | |
| 25 | Rami Ginat - Egyptian Communist Voices of Peace (1947-1958) | Rami Ginat discusses the Egyptian Communist Party's stance on Israel in its formative first decade of statehood. | Rami Ginat, Yaacov Yadgar | 30 May 2018 | |
| 26 | Creative Commons | Faisal Devji: Jewish Pecedents and Muslim Nationalism | Faisal Devji discusses the surprising relations between Pakistani nationalism and Zionism. | Faisal Devji, Yaacov Yadgar | 02 May 2018 |
| 27 | Yuval Evri: Andalusian Legacies: the role of al-Andalus/Sepharad in the political and cultural history of Israel/Palestine | Yuval Evri discusses the uses of the the image of Al-Andalus in political and cultural discourses in the turn of the 20th Century. | Yuval Evri, Yaacov Yadgar | 07 Mar 2018 | |
| 28 | Creative Commons | Galia Sabar: African Migration to Israel - Chronicle of a Failure Foretold | The history and politics of African migration to Israel | Galia Sabar, Yaacov Yadgar | 21 Feb 2018 |
| 29 | Almog Behar - Between Hebrew and Arabic | The politics, culture, and reality of Hebrew and Arabic in Israel and beyond. | Almog Behar, Yaacov Yadgar | 14 Feb 2018 | |
| 30 | Eugene Rogan - The Myth of the Campbell-Bannerman Report: Arab views on Israel after the Suez Crisis | On the origins and context of a little know (for some obvious reasons) chapter in the history of the Zionism. | Eugene Rogan | 08 Feb 2018 | |
| 31 | Creative Commons | Haim Yacobi - Israel, Africa: Identity, Culture and Politics | Haim Yacobi (UCL) gives a talk on Israel in Africa, Africa (and Africans) in Israel. | Haim Yacobi, Yaacov Yadgar | 30 Jan 2018 |
| 32 | Avi Shlaim - A Jordanian Perspective on Israel | Prof. Avi Shlaim reviews the history of the Jordanian-Israeli relations, and considers how Israel is viewed and understood from the Jordanian side | Avi Shlaim, Yaacov Yadgar | 29 Nov 2017 | |
| 33 | Birth of the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi Controversy on the ‘Arab Question’ (1910-12) | On 'the mother' of all ensuing Mizrahi–Ashkenazi ethnic controversies. | Moshe Behar, Yaacov Yadgar | 01 Nov 2017 | |
| 34 | Jews, Israel and Debate: Understanding Israel in the Diaspora | Why and how should we study Diaspora Jews' relation to Israel? | Ilan z Baron, Yaacov Yadgar | 31 Oct 2017 |