ISRAEL STUDIES

New summer institute expands Hebrew opportunities

By Dr. Karen Grumberg, Israel Studies Faculty Coordinator at SCJS and Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies

To bring the study of Israel into conversation with other national and regional experiences, Israel Studies at UT Austin has continued to seek connections with other programs, centers, and departments through virtual and in-person events. This year, we hosted talks about a breathtaking array of topics: the collective memory of Arabs in Israel (Dr. Arik Rudnitzky, Tel Aviv University); sexual violence in Hebrew literature (Dr. Ilana Szobel, Brandeis University); archives and knowledge production in Israel/ Palestine (Dr. Gil Hochberg, Columbia University); Hebrew and Yiddish literary intersections (Dr. Adi Mahalel, University of Maryland); Israel/U.S. relations (Walter Russell Mead, Hudson Institute and Bard College); Israel’s new government (UT’s Dr. Ahmad Agbraia and Dr. Andrew Lee Butters); historiographic debates in Israel (Dr. Danny Orbach, Hebrew University); Iranian/Israeli crosscultural artistic collaboration (Keren Farago and Ashkan Roayaee, artists); Jewish-Swedish photographer Anna Riwkin-Brick’s children’s photographic picture books (Dvorit Shargal, documentary film producer); and Hebrew poetry and the translation process (Yudit Shahar, Israeli poet; and Aviya Kushner, her translator to English). In April, as part of the annual Children of Abraham/Ibrahim film series, the Austin Film Society screened the Israeli film Cinema Sabaya (Orit Fouks Rotem, 2021), introduced by the UT film and Judaica librarian, Uri Kolodney. Our events this year were co-sponsored or organized by diverse units, including Middle Eastern Studies; History; LGBTQ Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies; Germanic Studies; Comparative Literature; Journalism; the Plan II Honors Program; Theater and Dance; the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at the School of Design and Creative Technologies; and the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Last fall, we were delighted to welcome a new Israel Institute Teaching Fellow, Dr. Ahmad Agbaria (History/ Middle Eastern Studies) from Tel Aviv University. Dr. Agbaria taught three Israel-focused courses this year: “The History of Israel,” “Arab Citizens of Israel,” and “Israel/Palestine Conflict.” Alongside these offerings in Israeli history, our Hebrew language program continues to thrive under the leadership of Dr. Esther Raizen and Anat Maimon.

The Hebrew program will expand this summer with the launch of the new Hebrew Summer Institute (HSI) at UT, which will allow students at UT and beyond to pursue intensive Hebrew study over the summer and prepare for intermediate Hebrew.

Through a variety of fellowships for students and faculty, we continue to support excellence in scholarship on Israel. In the fall, Hannah Salmon (Ph.D. student, Ethnomusicology) was awarded a travel grant to conduct research in Israel on Palestinian storytelling traditions. Daniella Harari (M.A. student, LBJ School of Public Affairs) was awarded the Dual Language Fellowship for the study of Hebrew and Arabic. Atalia IsraeliNevo (Ph.D. student, Anthropology), who completed her second year as the holder of the prestigious Israel Studies Graduate Fellowship, was awarded an Israel Studies Travel

Fellowship to conduct research for her project on utopia, animal labor, and queer fantasies in Israel and in Berlin this summer. Another Israel Studies Travel Fellowship was awarded to Erin Brantmayer (Ph.D. student, Classics), who will participate in the excavation of Birsama, the largest unexcavated Roman fort in the Negev Desert. Marco Bunge (Ph.D. student, Middle Eastern Studies) was awarded the Israel Studies Supplementary Fellowship to allow him to undertake summer study of Hebrew at UT’s new Hebrew Summer Institute (HSI) and to travel to Israel to begin his fieldwork in Arabic dialectology. Additionally, two faculty members were awarded Faculty Summer Stipends for Research on Israel: Dr. Samantha Pickette for her project “The Sabra Within the Schlemiel: Diverging Modes of American Jewish and Israeli Masculinity in Jewish American Literature,” which she will present at the Association for Israel Studies conference this June; and Dr. Ahmad Agbaria, for his article-in-progress titled “The Dawn of Mideast Peace.”

These student and faculty fellowships in Israel Studies make an invaluable contribution to the study of Israel, past and present. They benefit our students, our faculty, and our community beyond campus, and speak to our investment in fostering a nuanced understanding of the Hebrew language and of Israeli culture, history, and politics.