The Department of English Language & Literature, University of Haifa
Spring 2021 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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On the 16th floor we are emerging from our chrysalis, taking baby-steps to resume all forms of human contact not mediated by the all-to-familiar "you're on mute." Hilla and Bernadette are working full time from the office. Some of us are here on a daily basis, while others drop by from time to time. The only thing missing is you - students, alumni, and friends. If you have the "green pass," do drop by – for office hours, to go to the library, to say hello – we'd be delighted to see you.
Strangely, we also find ourselves cautious. What will this brave new (old) world look like? What will we wear? It sometimes seems as
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though the pandemic has made us suspicious of the very human contact that we crave.
The newsletter reminds us that we have been very active all along – in the (online) classroom, in research, in the media. We also welcome new department members and honor those who have departed this world.
Until we meet again, please continue to stay safe; it is not over yet. And as always, let's keep reading; it's the best thing we do.
- Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Department Head.
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I primarily work on both early modern poetry and on academic writing. As a researcher, I have been passionate about the ways that lyric and epic poets depict emotional and cognitive experience and knowledge. Dreaming, thinking, feeling sensations, and expressing love and loss are a few of the phenomena that I track and analyze in poets writing between 1500-1700. I also love teaching academic writing at all levels; it excites me to watch and help students develop their ideas into good arguments about literary language. In my free time, I enjoy camping, hiking, biking, and baking. When time and public health rules permit, I’m also known to bring my twin daughters, now age 10, to art exhibits, movies, and wine tastings and festivals.
- Dr. Jenn Lewin, Head of the Writing Program.
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Our Postdoctoral Scholars
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| Dr. Noa Reich is an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellows based in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Haifa. Her research, which has appeared or is forthcoming in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Law and Literature, and Partial Answers, focuses on nineteenth-century British fiction, with an emphasis on issues of law and capitalism, subjectivity, as well as narrative form. She is currently at work on a book manuscript that illuminates Victorian novels’ recurring depictions of inheritance as a speculative financial and imaginative project, which takes as its objects both property and familial relations. Situating these depictions in the context of the period’s legal and political economic debates, her study shows how the novels explore conflicting conceptions of family and responsibility amidst the rise of credit and liberal individualism.
- Dr. Noa Reich, Research Fellow.
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| I am a cultural historian of media and modern Britain. I hold a PhD in History from Rutgers University, and am now a Research Fellow at the University of Haifa. My work has examined television and celebrity culture as sites of political engagement and solidarity. My current book manuscript, Broadcasting Bias: The Struggle over Apartheid on British Television, 1960-1990, documents both the televisual representation of apartheid and the efforts of activists, diplomats, writers, actors, broadcasters, union members, and viewers to determine the perception of South Africa in Britain and shape the country’s policy vis-à-vis apartheid. My work has been published in the journals Postcolonial Studies, Critical Arts and Safundi. A Special Issue co-edited with Louise Bethlehem for Critical Arts, “Celebrity and Protest in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle” was published recently. “The Comic Representation of Apartheid on British Television in the late 1960s,” came out in February in the edited collection Apartheid in Western Europe: Perceptions and Reactions, 1948-1994 (Palgrave Macmillan). My research has been supported by the European Research Council, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Israel Science Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Before embarking on my academic career, I was a journalist. I am a podcast host for New Books Network.
- Dr. Tal Zalmanovich, Research Fellow.
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In Memoriam: Professor Martin Orkin
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Prof. Martin Orkin came from South Africa to the University of Haifa in 1998 as a world-class Shakespeare scholar, his publications testifying to his brilliance and his passionate commitment to equality and justice for all. Books such as Shakespeare Against Apartheid (1987) or Post-Colonial Shakespeares (1998) won him no friends in the Apartheid regime, and even placed him in personal danger. Scholars and students all over the world were moved and impressed by the quality of his scholarship as well as by his intellectual candor and the courage it required. Once in Israel, Martin continued to publish cutting-edge scholarship on Shakespeare's relevance
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to our contemporary world, most prominently Local Shakespeares: Proximations and Power (2005). His students in the English and Theater Departments, and at Sachnin College remember Prof. Orkin as an inspiring professor, who challenged them to think critically and originally about the texts they read. Martin wrote his final book, Race (2019), while struggling with a debilitating illness, developing even further his life-long commitments to the bard and racial justice. With his recent passing, we have lost a leading light in our intellectual community as well as a wise and beloved friend. His critical legacy and scholarship endure, the department's past living on in its present.
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HAIFA READS…1984
To inaugurate the new year, in what has become a popular fixture in the English Department’s calendar, HAIFA READS… returned for its third iteration, on October 28th, with George Orwell’s 1984. In a year bedeviled by political and cultural crises of all
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kinds, in a climate of increased surveillance, masterminded by increasingly authoritarian populist regimes across the world, the time felt ripe to take on this weighty classic of dystopian fiction. As ever, the event combined contributions from faculty and students, including a lecture by Prof. Erdinast-Vulcan, a creative-writing panel directed by Dr. Raz, a series of reading groups discussing the Newspeak dictionary and a student panel, “Tech, Track, Trace: 1984 in 2020” on the novel’s contemporary resonances. In spite of the difficult circumstances of the pandemic, the event was lively, thoroughly absorbing and very well attended. Indeed, far from presenting an obstacle, the remote/ virtual conditions sparked discussions about the relationship between the technologies of our world and Orwell’s, between our own reliance on Zoom and Big Brother’s ubiquitous deployment of the telescreen.
- Dr. Alex Feldman.
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Poetry Readings Galore
Taking advantage of our zoom-hood, we invited three amazing pairs of poets from Canada & the States to come virtually visit us and share their work. Aisha Sasha John & Brandon Brown, Peter Cole & John Burt, Hoa Nguyen & Anselm Berrigen gave readings
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In the picture: Aisha Sasha John
which were moving, strange, exciting. Poets looked into the camera, suprising, chanting – students often commented: they didn’t act like our teachers! The readings were organized by Yosefa Raz and Jenn Lewin, as part of the Intro to Poetry & Drama classes, but were open to all the department as well as visitors from the wider community. After the formal reading, our students (as well as students from Yale & Brandeis at one event) read as part of an open mic, also student-organized. The chats were utlized to cheer on friends, to exclaim and laugh, even to fight about HIMYM. Poetry wiggled off the page, shimmered into the (virtual) room, and became a Thing That Happened. Big shout out to Marianna Akawi, Nimrod Morgenstern, Carmit Degani, and Karen Sharouf for organizing student readings and to all the brave and fantastic student readers!
- Dr. Yosefa Raz.
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Alumni Literary Salon
We have long had two dreams in the department: one was to create an alumni community, where we would keep meeting and talking with former students even after graduation. The second was to have an informal forum where we could meet and talk about literature, scholarship, and ideas, a seminar, maybe, but without the homework and grading. We finally decided to combine the two dreams and – despite the third lockdown – held our first Alumni Literary Salon, where graduates of the M.A. and Ph.D. programs and department lecturers met on Zoom to hear a fascinating (and hilarious) talk
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by Dr. Feldman, about his adventures tracking down a plagiarizing priest, intent on passing T.S. Eliot's writing off as his own, in what might be a literary Robin Hood-like obsession.
Much fun was had by all; our virtual seminar table reminded us of what we have been missing. We will do this again soon – please sign up here if you would like to hear more about our alumni activities and community.
- Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai.
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The department congratulates its students, Rima Mahameed and Khadeejah Fahoum, on each receiving a merit scholarship, awarded to BA honors students who continue directly to the master's degree program at the University of Haifa.
The Department also congratulates its student, Haya Onallah, on winning an honorable mention for her poem, “Blind” at the 31st annual Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.
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Congratulations also to our own Prof. Batia Laufer, recognized as one of the most influential scholars world-wide in the field of Languages and Linguistics.
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Radio Interview with Dr. Keren Omry (in Hebrew)
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"Gam Ken Tarbut" program with Goel Pinto on 18.1.21 (min 43:00 onwards). The interview was on the eve of the inauguration of President Biden and Dr. Omry spoke about representations of US presidents in literature.
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Y-net article written by Dr. Yosefa Raz (in Hebrew)
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"'Prophetic Enthusiasm: It's Not Just Our Thing". This is part of a series called "Private Researchers" which invites scholars to discuss their inspiration. Dr. Raz talks about how she came to realize that other peoples, beside Israelis, understood themselves as fulfilling biblical prophecies & that in fact prophetic enthusiasm was a formative part of European and American Romantic and nationalist movements in the 19th century.
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Radio Interview with Dr. Keren Omry (in Hebrew)
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"Ma Karoch" program with Yuval Avivi and Mia Sela on 10.01.21 (min 13:40 onwards). Dr. Omry spoke about revolutionary impulses in American culture alongside the privileging of US Democracy as the guarantee of stability.
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Podcast with Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai (in Hebrew)
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Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai was interviewed in the "Wake-up Call" podcast on politics and society in India.
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New BA Program in English Literature & History
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Double Major Program in Ofakim Honors Program & English Literature Studies
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