CV

EDUCATION
2024: PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Michigan.

Guilty Pleasures: Popular Fiction, Jewish Cultures, and Vernacular Modernities                      

Committee: Maya Barzilai, Shachar Pinsker, Mikhail Krutikov, Devi Mays
2015 - 2018: MA, Tel Aviv University: Comparative Literature, awarded Summa Cum Laude.
2011 - 2016: MA, Reichman University, Herzliya: Organizational    Development.       

2008 - 2011: BA, Tel Aviv University: Literature and Psychology, awarded Summa Cum Laude.

RESEARCH AREAS and TEACHING INTERESTS

Modern Jewish Literatures and Cultures; Translation Studies / Translation Theory and Practice; Postcolonial Theory; Intersections of Class, Race, Gender, and Sexuality; World Literature; Transnational History; Migration and Diaspora; Empire Studies; Canon Formation; Popular Culture; Sephardic Studies; Jews in the Muslim World; Hebrew Literature; Slavic Studies; Yiddish Studies; Memory Studies; Digital Humanities.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

University of Michigan, Screening Jewish Cultures, upper-level race and ethnicity seminar (Fall 2023)

-       Teaching assistant, assessing assignments, seminar for advanced students (300-level)

University of Michigan, Translating World Literature, upper-level writing course (Fall 2022)

-       Create, manage, and teach weekly discussion-based class for advanced students (300-level)

University of Michigan, Global Vampires, first year seminar (Fall 2021)

-       Create, manage, and teach weekly discussion-based class (100-level)

University of Michigan, Pathways to Writing: Narratives of Immigration and Displacement, first year writing course (Fall 2020)

-       Designed class for Comparative Literature Department (100-level)

-       Create, manage, and teach weekly discussion-based class for first year students.

University of Michigan, The Animal in Me: Writing Animality and Humanity, first year writing course (Fall 2019 and Winter 2020).

-       Designed class for the English Department (100-level)

-       Create, manage, and teach weekly discussion-based class for first year students.

Tel Aviv University, Introduction to Narratology, first year seminar (Fall 2016 & Fall 2017).

-       Designed class for the Comparative Literature Department

-       Create, manage, and teach weekly discussion-based class for first year students (100-level)

RESEARCH and TRAINING

2023: Professional Development Fellow Rackham Graduate School, supporting work as assistant to Judaica librarian and curator at the University of Michigan Library. Responsibilities include identifying and purchasing materials for the Judaica collections, creating metadata, and cataloging items, writing blogposts about new materials, and assisting integration of library resources in undergraduate courses.

2023: International Studies Internship at the University of Michigan Library, training focused on processing workflows, basic cataloging with an emphasis on non-Western languages, use of Romanization tables for non-Latin scripts, and the nexus of publication practices and library practices.     

2023: FUSP – Nida Center for Advance Research on Translation Summer School 

2022: Rackham Professional Development Program for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 

2021: Internship at the University of Michigan Library. Research project funded by the Comparative Literature Department and conducted with the Judaica curator, Dr. Gabriel Mordoch, to map, collect, and curate modern Ladino literature.

2021-2023: Editor, translator, and researcher, “Below the Line: The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Culture,” an interdisciplinary project led by Prof. Naomi Brenner (Ohio State University) and Prof. Shachar Pinsker (U-M Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies), funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Academy for Jewish Research.

2021: Graduate Student Research Assistant, “Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest,” a collaborative project led by faculty at the University of Michigan’s Department of Comparative Literature, funded by the Mellon-Sawyer foundation. The position entailed event planning and coordination, research supporting the project, content writing, and web-site management and maintenance.

2016 – 2018: Research assistant in a research group funded by the Israeli Science Foundation, led by Prof. Eran Dorfman, Chair of the Comparative Literature Department, Tel Aviv University. The research was conducted in preparation of Prof. Dorfman’s book Double Trouble: The Doppelgänger from Romanticism to Postmodernism (Routledge, 2020). The research project studied the role of the Double (Doppelgänger) with regard to self-identity, multiplicity and alterity.

PUBLICATIONS

Review of Ayelet Brinn, A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press (NYU Press, 2023), In Geveb (forthcoming)

“Translating Jewish Multilingualism,” Absinthe: World Literature in Translation 29, co-edited and co-authored introduction with Maya Barzilai (2023). https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/absinthe/ 

“New Perspectives on Ladino Literature: Translation and Adaptation in the Modern Era,” under review, Prooftexts.

“Ladino Translation and Ottoman Jewish Modernization,” Ha-kivun Mizrach (Eastward) 40 (2021): 28-39 (Hebrew)

“Sephardi Culture in Salonica in Light of Ladino Satirical Feuilletons” (co-authored with Tamir Karkason), Ha-kivun Mizrach (Eastward) 39 (2021): 10-25 (Hebrew)

PUBLIC-FACING WRITING

“Translating Jewish Multilingualism,” a special issue of Absinthe – World Literature in Translation (forthcoming, December 2023).

“Nat Pinkerton: Detective Novels in Ladino,” Lost in the Stacks: University of Michigan Library Blog (2023). https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/lost-stacks/nat-pinkerton-detective-novels-ladino

“The Revival of Ladino Literature,” Lost in the Stacks: University of Michigan Library Blog (2023). https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/lost-stacks/revival-ladino-literature

“The Multivalence of Hebrew Alphabet Across Jewish Languages in the HathiTrust Repository,” Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest: Mellon Sawyer Seminar, University of Michigan (2021). https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/translatemidwest/2021/04/27/the-multivalence-of-hebrew-alphabet-across-jewish-languages-in-the-hathitrust-repository/

“Endangered and Emerging Jewish Languages: An Interview with Sarah Bunin Benor,” In Geveb (2020). https://ingeveb.org/blog/interview-with-sarah-bunin-benor

TRANSLATIONS

Uri Nissan Gnessin, “The Meal before the Fast,” Absinthe: Journal for World Literature in Translation (forthcoming, December 2023).

Adolfo de Castro, “The Bondage of Jews in Spain,” Bellow the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures (forthcoming, December 2023)

Moshe Bar-Nissim (translator), “Esther,” 1910. Bellow the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures (forthcoming, December 2023)

Moshe Cazes, “Uncle Bohor and his Wife Djamila”; “Uncle Ezra and his Wife Benuta,” 1939. Bellow the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures. https://feuilleton.judaic.lsa.umich.edu/s/below-the-line/item/139

Grace Aguilar, Yeshayahu Gelbhaus (translator), “The War of Faith and Love,” 1874. Bellow the Line: The Feuilleton and Modern Jewish Cultures.  https://feuilleton.judaic.lsa.umich.edu/s/below-the-line/item/173

WORKS in PROGRESS

Manuscript: The Convert and Other Stories, annotated anthology of modern Ladino fiction in translation.

Translation: The Ottoman Captain, Ladino novel by Elia Karmona (Istanbul, 1910).

Article: “Between Inspiration and Divide Presence: Uri Nissan Gnessin’s Translations of Anton Chekhov and Hebrew Diasporic Culture”

Article: ““We Were a People Without a Tongue”: Silence and Translation in the Multilingual World of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff”

Article: “In Search of a Lost Sephardi Time: Memory and Bilingual Storytelling in Isak Papo’s Cuentos from Jewish Sarajevo”

Edited Volume Chapter: “Serializing Sepharad: The Multilingual Trajectories of the Historical Roman-Feuilleton in the Ladino, Hebrew, and Yiddish Press”

CONFERENCES and PRESENTATIONS

• Translation, Adaptation, Illustration: Ladino Literary Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Jewish Culture Symposium, Frankel Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Michigan, 2024.

• Affect, Hebrew Translation, and Jewish Diasporic Culture: The Case of Uri Nissan Gnessin, Modern Languages Association (MLA) Annual Convention, 2024.

• The (Im)possibilities of Jewish Bilingualism: ‘The Case of La Amerika;’ co-organizer of panel “Reading Publics and Jewish Modernity: Challenges and Possibilities,” Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Annual Conference, 2023.

• History in the Making: Hebrew Translations of Historical Fiction in Ottoman Palestine, Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Annual Conference, 2023.  

• Mediterranean Adventures: Ladino Sea Travel Narratives and Performative Constructions of Sephardi Identity, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Conference, 2023.

• The Return to Sepharad: The Multilingual Trajectories of the Jewish Historical Novel, Parkes Institute Conference on Jewish-non-Jewish Relations, Southampton University, 2023.

• Translation across Ethnic Divides: Attempts of Bilingualism in the Ladino Press in New York, FUSP Nida International Translation Studies Summer School, 2023.

• Translation and Circulation of Popular Historical Novels, roundtable panel on Popular Literature and Modern Jewish Culture. Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Annual Conference, 2022.

• Reorienting Ottoman Jewish Modernity: The Ladino Adaptations of Elia Karmona, Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Conference, 2022.

• Translated Modernity: The Practice and Poetics of Ladino Translation in the Novels of Elia Karmona, (En)gendering Ladino: Transmission, Language, and Creation –ucLadino Annual Conference, University of California – Los Angeles, 2022.

• Ladino Popular Fiction and the Formation of Sephardi Cultural Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire, Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) Annual Conference, 2021.

• “We Were a People Without a Tongue”: The Multilingual World of Jacqueline Kahanoff, “Sites of Translation” Interdisciplinary Workshop – Tel Aviv University, University of Michigan, and Stanford University, 2019.

• The Figure of the Double in Hebrew Literature, The Uncanny in Language, Literature and Culture Conference, London Center for Interdisciplinary Research, 2017.

INVITED TALKS

• E-Sefarad and Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington: La ovra del famozo eskrivano Elia R. Karmona (in Ladino), Enkontros de Alhad Series (2024)

• The Center for Jewish History, New York: “Fleeting Bilingualism in the Ladino Newspaper La Amerika” (2023)

• The Neubauer Collegium, The University of Chicago: “The Jewish Translation of Les Mystéres de Paris and the Circulation of Popular Literature” (2022)

• Sephardi Culture Colloquium, Ariel University: “Ladino Translation and Ottoman Jewish Modernization” (2022).

• Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest, Mellon Sawyer Seminar, University of Michigan: “Translation Networks and Jewish Languages in HathiTrust” (2022)

FELLOWSHIPS and AWARDS

• Marshall Weinberg Dissertation Prize (University of Michigan, 2024)

• Marshall Weinberg Dissertation Fellowship (University of Michigan, 2023)

• Rackham Humanities Research Fellowship (University of Michigan, 2023)

• Comparative Literature Internship Fellowship (University of Michigan, 2021)

• Rackham International Student Fellowship (University of Michigan, 2020)

• Rackham Language Training Award (University of Michigan, 2019)

• Jewish Studies Scholarship for Outstanding Academic Achievements (Tel Aviv University, 2018)

• Dean of Humanities Scholarship for Outstanding Research and Academic Excellence (Tel Aviv University, 2017)

• Berg Foundation Award for Outstanding Research Contribution (Tel Aviv University, 2016)

SERVICE AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

• Member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan (2023)

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training as part of the Rackham DEI Professional Development Program, University of Michigan (2022-23)

• Managing Editor, Absinthe – World Literature in Translation, an annual Journal published by the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Michigan (2022-23)

• Graduate Student Mentor in MICHHERS – Michigan Humanities Emerging Research Scholars Program by the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan to encourage students of diverse backgrounds to pursue advanced humanities degrees (2022)

• Organizer of CLIFF –The Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum annual conference, Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan (2020-21)

LANGUAGES

• Hebrew - Native speaker

• Russian – Native speaker

• English - Near-native fluency

• Ladino - Advanced Level

• Yiddish - Advanced Level

• Portuguese – Reading Proficiency

• Spanish – Reading Proficiency

• French – Reading Proficiency

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

· Association for Jewish Studies (AJS)

· Middle East Studies Association (MESA)

· American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA)

· Modern Languages Association (MLA)