The Department of English Language & Literature, University of Haifa
Spring 2022 Newsletter
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If you cannot see the entire newsletter,
make sure to click "view entire message" at the end of this email.
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Greetings from the Department Chair
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The masks have come off –
Some of us are tearing them off with relief and joy, others more hesitantly perhaps, preferring to leave them on until we feel more confident. Either way, it would do us all good to remember that COVID is not yet over. Please do not come sick to class or campus, act responsibly and in solidarity with those whose health is more fragile.
One also wonders what it means to see again the smiles (and frowns) of strangers and acquaintances on the street, in classrooms, and in the hallways. What does it mean to be seen? Is it time, as T.S. Eliot would have it, "to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"?
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Now that the masks have come off, and spring is here, it might be time for some truth-telling, for some much-needed fresh air.
Happy Spring, everyone; we're looking forward to seeing you in the colloquium on May 12!
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Nice to meet... Our Teaching Fellows
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Dr. Eli Osheroff
I am a historian of the modern Middle East with a focus on the Zionist-Arab conflict and Arab intellectual history. At the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Haifa, I am a fellow attached to Dr. Keren Omry’s ISF project Slipping Sideways: Contemporaneity and Alternate Histories. A major part of my postdoctoral research on decolonization in the Arab world (1940s-1960s) is dedicated to utopian writings and the political imagination in Arabic, and their connection to world literature.
The dialogue with scholars of literature contributes to my understanding of the
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poetical dimensions of historical discourse. I live in Jerusalem with my family, and in my spare time I enjoy reading, sometimes even real books, on paper. I re-discovered in recent years that this technology is relatively distraction-free, and that most books are better than most T.V. series. You can find me in departmental seminars and other events, and I can also be contacted at eli.osheroff@mail.huji.ac.il.
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Dr. Chen Edelsburg
Hi, I’m Chen, a mother of a small baby and a large dog, living in Jaffa. In my free time I enjoy embroidering on tote bags. In my non-free time I am a scholar of Comparative Literature working on American and Hebrew literatures and the intersections between them, with a special interest in feminist and intersectional narratology. The aim of my research is to integrate theories of subjectivity into narrative thought about reading processes, while taking into account a diverse range of readers and subject positions, especially regarding gender and health.
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My post-doc project, entitled “Alternating Readers’ Histories: Accountability, Coercion, and the ‘Antagonistic You’,” focuses on works by Jamaica Kincaid and Lucia Berlin and the role of the second-person address in forming readers' alternate biographies.
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The students, staff, and faculty of the English Department mourn the passing of our beloved student and colleague, Noga Nir, and send our deepest condolences to her family.
Noga was brilliant, courageous, and a fierce advocate for people with disabilities. She is missed by all who knew her.
We will hold a session in her honour at the Department Colloquium on May 12, where we will read from her writing and present the Creative Prize in her name.
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Scholarships, Grants & Promotions
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Congratulations to Mariana Akkawi who has been awarded a scholarship by the Council of Higher Education for MA students of the Arab Community.
Congratulations to Haroon Avgana who has been awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to continue his studies at the University of Oxford.
And last but certainly not least, congratulations to Dr. Maurice Ebileeni for his promotion to Senior Lecturer with tenure in the Department, as well as for publishing his book Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World (Syracuse UP, 2022).
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Research Group: New Questions in Postcolonial Studies
We are delighted to announce the formation of a new interdisciplinary research group, entitled, "New Questions in Postcolonial Studies", which has been awarded a generous grant by the Faculty of the Humanities and will begin its work next year. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines - English, History, Music, Philosophy, and Asian Studies (including our own Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Maurice
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Ebileeni, and Tal Zalmanovich) - we expect that our collaboration will open new research avenues, including exchanging the conventional focus on the margins’ relations to the metropole for a consideration of those so-called margins’ relations with one another. Stay tuned for a call for graduate student participants (and scholarships!) in the summer.
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Our department is excited to announce the establishment of our own new writing center that provides one-on-one assistance with your academic writing. We specialize in helping you with any and all of these tasks:
• Understanding assignments.
• Brainstorming, pre-writing, and initial research.
• Organizing thoughts and ideas.
• Developing thesis statements and claims.
• Developing support for thesis statements in a paper’s body paragraphs.
• Understanding instructors’ comments.
• Revising effectively to improve clarity and cohesion.
• Researching: finding a topic, choosing search terms, conducting searches in the library catalogue and databases.
• Formatting references for in-text citations and Works Cited/Bibliographies/Reference pages for MLA style.
• Editing: learning to improve style at the sentence-level.
• Proofreading: learning how to find and correct errors in punctuation, grammar, and usage.
Write to jlewin@staff.haifa.ac.il to schedule a 20-minute appointment. These sessions are free of charge and take place either on zoom or in person (in Eshkol Tower - 1601).
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A Token of Our Appreciation for Daphna
On January 12 we gathered on Zoom for a surprise party in honor of the last class taught by our beloved colleague and teacher, Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, before her retirement this summer. Colleagues and students, past and present, celebrated a lifetime of students and papers, of office hours and administration. We remembered moments of the sublime and moments of the ridiculous, often tied inextricably and frustratingly together. Most of all, we celebrated what Daphna has taught us: the joys of teaching, the dedication and responsibility that comes with it, and the endless (and endlessly frustrating) work of perfecting it. So here's to you, Daphna, and thanks to you – for where would we all have been without you?
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Haifa Reads - Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice
The 4th Annual Haifa Reads event, held on October 28th 2021, was the first occasion on which the English Department came together (not virtually, but for real) after almost two years of pandemic. Pride and Prejudice was just the novel to make this occasion even more joyous, and we ended up, literally, having a ball.
Dr. Sarah Gilead opened the event with a fascinating talk entitled “Pride and Prejudice and Pleasure,” and we then analyzed the novel’s memorable opening in discussion groups. After a break for pizza, the Department Chair, Dr. Ben-Yishai, led us on the dance floor in our very own Jane Austen Ball. Dr. Barzilai closed the evening with “Darcy and the Zombies,” reviewing some of the novel’s remarkable adaptations. Throughout the event, a group of students led by Dr. Raz and Areage Okab posted humorous updates on social media. Preparations for our 5th Annual Haifa Reads event are already underway. We look forward to seeing you there.
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Dr. Zeev Hirst's Book Launch
On February 16, the department held a zoom get-together of faculty and students, with an impressive reinforcement of the department’s emeriti and alumni, to celebrate the publication of Zeev Hirst’s The Warm Scribe: Originality and Rewriting, a comprehensive and original study of works in European literature, focusing on three English Romantic poets: Keats, Shelley, and Byron, and their intertextual relations with the Bible and with classical texts.
Following an introductory welcome address by Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai and Prof. Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, we were offered two learned and original responses to the book by Dr. Sarah Gilead and Dr. Zoe Beenstock, and then opened the floor to the participants who contributed both professional comments and fond personal reminiscences of Dr. Hirst, one of the founders of the English Department at the University of Haifa.
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Poetry Reading
This year we’ve held three poetry readings... so far. (One more to go!) organized by Dr. Jenn Lewin & Dr. Yosefa Raz, together with a committee of student organizers. Utilizing zoom, we’ve been able to bring readers from the U.S. and Sweden, as well as host local poets. Each reading has been exhilarating, surprising, moving, and challenging in its own way, proving that poetry – when taken off the page and connected to the human voice and live interaction – is an entirely different art form. Some noteworthy moments: Ana Wild’s spellbinding performance at the port; Matthew Lippman poetizing about dancing alone to Prince; Ariel Resnikoff’s cursing and spitting poems and Vivian Eden’s weird poetry version of Jerusalem reporters. Perhaps the highlights of all events, though, are the student readings, the smiles and tears on stage, and the amazing cheers from the audience.
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A Trip to See Hamlet at Habima Theater
With 26 of us (students and faculty) in attendance, the Haifa English Department made up 20% of the audience of Ma’or Zaguri’s Hamlet at Habima on April 24th.
This production—described by one reviewer as “Hamlet by William Zaguri”—is an iconoclastic version of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, bringing together the bard’s words (though not necessarily in the order in which he put them), outstanding choreography, and a very unusual Hamlet.
Students and teachers carpooled to Tel Aviv and back, creating yet another opportunity for our community to come together for some intellectual pleasure in an informal environment.
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Future Events in the Department
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Department Colloquium
Join us for our Department's Annual Colloquium, which will be held on May 12th on campus.
We hope to see you there!
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BBC Conference
We are delighted to invite you to an exciting international conference we are co-organizing in Haifa, marking the 100th anniversary of the BBC. Our focus is on the way the world was broadcast to and from the BBC, and its long-lasting impact on media, culture, and politics world-wide. If you or anyone you know would be interested in submitting a paper, please click here.
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Eyad Barghouti talks (in Hebrew) about Dr. Maurice Ebileeni's book Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World, in the program Under Cover - מה שכרוך on Radio Kan. The segment starts at minute 29 of the episode. Click here to listen!
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