Dissertation: Bardi, Cleansing, Constructing, and Curating the State: India/Pakistan ’47 and Israel/Palestine ’48

Bardi, Ariel Sophia. Cleansing, Constructing, and Curating the State: India/Pakistan ’47 and Israel/Palestine ’48 , PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2015.

 
URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/36/63/3663495.html

 
Abstract

This dissertation looks at the ways in which the landscape and the built environment have been called upon and transformed into conduits of national belonging, focusing on the near-simultaneous emergences of Israel, India, and Pakistan. It considers the role of space in consolidating new national bodies, drawing on a variety of texts from both regions: memoirs, films, archival and field photos, housing plans, and the architectural landscape itself.

The first chapter explores the Jewish and Indian Muslim bids for sovereign lands along with the rise of Hindu nationalism. Looking at the founding of Pakistan and Israel, it considers the self-replicative logic of partition and the emergence of the homeland state. Arguing for the importance of image and space in conjuring new nationhoods, the second chapter compares systems of spatial control, visual regimes that mounted and imposed new national imaginaries. In India, Pakistan, and Israel/Palestine, selective acts of destruction transformed formerly shared spaces, inflecting the landscape with three distinct new states.

The third chapter looks at post-state refugee rehabilitation projects, focusing specifically on Mizrahi, or Arab Jewish, immigration to the Israeli hinterlands, and Mizrahi, or Indian refugee, resettlement within the Pakistani province of Sindh. In both regions, housing projects re-circumscribed place of origin, challenging the purported unity of each religiously pooled state and relegating refugees to the margins of each new nation. Tracing the relationship between architecture and partition, it considers the different modalities bound up in the process of national absorption. The fourth chapter compares historical preservation projects in India, Pakistan, Israel, and Palestine, and examines the role of heritage sites in visualizing statehood and homogenizing mixed spaces. Considering the furor over India’s Babri Masjid, it posits preservation as a corollary to demolition, and examines a selection of heritage locations in Israel and Pakistan while arguing for the uses of the past in upholding majority collectivities. Finally, the conclusion considers the afterlives of partition in places such as Kashmir, the West Bank, and India’s far northeast, in ongoing occupations that are as visual and spatial as they are material, economic, and political.

 

 

New Article: Amihay, Color Photography and Self-Outing in Jewish Women’s Comics

Amihay, Ofra. “Red Diapers, Pink Stories. Color Photography and Self-Outing in Jewish Women’s Comics.” Image & Narrative 16.2 (2015): 42-64.

URL: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/811

 

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze the function of color photography in autobiographical comics through a comparative analysis of confessional works of comics by two Jewish women artists, Jewish-American cartoonist Dianne Noomin’s 2003 comics spread “I Was a Red Diaper Baby” and Israeli cartoonist Ilana Zeffren’s Pink Story (written in Hebrew). While exploring the tensions evoked in these works between comics and photography and between black-and-white and color representations, I highlight an important difference in the nature of the images used in each work, evoking yet another tension: that between private and public. I demonstrate that these works by Noomin and Zeffren represent the array of private and public photographs available to any autobiographer, ranging from public images taken from posters, magazines, and video screenshots to intimate family snapshots. I argue that the choice between personal and public photographs in these works poetically determines the path of self-outing in each work, thus representing the two key options for such an act of self-outing, namely, using the personal sphere as a path to the public one or vice-versa. Finally, I address the role of Jewish identity in these two self-outing comics. I posit that while Jewish heritage is not a major factor in either work, the fact that in both cases the community of reference is a minority group within a Jewish community plays a significant role, introducing specific dilemmas into the already complicated identity struggle. By shedding light on the unique function of color photography in autobiographical comics about ethnographically charged self- outing experiences, the analysis of these specific works introduces to a wider audience two important yet insufficiently explored voices of women cartoonists.

 

Conference Program: 12th Int’l Conf on Jewish Names (BIU, March 18, 2015)

Bar-Ilan Univeristy
The Faculty of Jewish Studies
The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Judaism
The Project for the Study of Jewish Names

The Twelfth International Conference on Jewish Names
Wednesday, March 18, 2015, Feldman Hall, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

The conference was organized in cooperation with the Dahan Center and aided by a grant from the office of the vice president for research, Bar-Ilan University.

 

Session F: 15:45-17:45: Names in Modern Hebrew Literature and Linguistics:
Chair: Prof. Aaron Demsky, Head of the Project for the Study of Jewish Names, Bar-Ilan University
Greetings: Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, President, Bar-Ilan University
Prof. Elie Assis, Dean, Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University
Prof. Yaron Harel, Head of the Department of Jewish History and the Dahan Center, Bar-Ilan University
Erez Biton, Poet, Bialik Prize Laureate for 2015: Names in My Literary Ouvrage (Heb)
Ofra Matzov-Cohen, Ariel University: Names and their Contribution to the Text: A Comparative Study of the Novel Ahavah Shel Saltanat (Saltanat’s Love) and the Biography Zion Ezri, Beoz Ubehahavat Zion (With Courage and the Love of Zion) (Heb)
Ziva Feldman, Ariel University: The Poetics of Hanoch Levin and the Names of the Characters in his Works (Heb)
Tsvi Sadan, Bar-Ilan University: Toward the Onomastic Lexicography of Modern Hebrew (Heb)

Session G: 18:00-19:30: Names in the Land and State of Israel:
Chair: Dr. Dotan Arad, Bar-Ilan University
Shlomit Landman, Achva Academic College: The Cultural Perspective of Given Names in Israel, Based on Qualitative Interviews with Parents (Heb)
Sapir Omer Osias, Bar-Ilan University: Hebraization of Names in the Yishuv Period from the Second Half of the 19th Century: Perception, Progression and Effects (Heb)
Matanya Weynberger, Ariel University: The Hebraization of Family Names: Knesset Discussions from the 1950s (Heb)
Adel Shakour, Al-Qasemi Academy: Giving Children Hebrew Names in Druze Society in Israel (Heb)
The organizing committee: A. Demsky, Y. Levin, B. Kotlerman, I. Breier, T. Sadan

The Public is Welcome!

New Article:Miccoli, Family, Nation and Egyptian Jewish Past in Israeli Literature

Miccoli, Dario. “Another History: Family, Nation and the Remembrance of the Egyptian Jewish Past in Contemporary Israeli Literature.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13.3 (2014): 321-39.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14725886.2014.950124

 

Abstract

In this article I will focus on how Egyptian Jews who migrated to Israel after 1948 and their descendants remember Egypt and how they situate themselves vis-à-vis Israeli society and culture. I will base my analysis on three semi-autobiographical novels published between 2003 and 2011 by Israeli writers of Egyptian descent belonging to three subsequent generations: Baderekh la’itztadion by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, Kol tze‘adenu by Ronit Matalon, and Yolanda by Moshe Sakal. By analysing specific passages from these books, I will argue that even after the decline of the Jewish presence in Egypt in the 1950s, the cultural and social worlds to which their families belonged did not vanish completely but, rather, struggled for survival at a very intimate level. This ultimately produced a multifaceted archive in which the written narrative of the family’s past became an alternative homeland where historical memories and fictional details are inextricably blended.

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Reviews: Schulman, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International

Schulman, Sarah. Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

 

 

Reviews

• Prashad, Vijay. “Putting Palestine on the Map.” Jadaliyya, November 9, 2012.
• Bianco, Marcie. “Review.” Lambda Literary, November 27, 2012.
• Kearns, Gerry. “Gender, Politics, Solidarity.” Dublin Review of Books.
• Clifton, Lois. “Review.” Socialist Review, January 2013.
• Kerr, Ted. “Sarah Schulman’s Joy and the Queer Practice of Everyday Freedom.” Pretty Queer, February 14, 2013.
• Jochnowitz, George. “Pinkwashing is Hogwash When Used Against Israel.” Arutz Sheva, April 5, 2013.
• Somerson, Wendy Elishheva. “Queering Palestinian Solidarity Work.” Tikkun, July 28, 2013.
• Irmas, Jack. “Limited Solidarity with Palestine in Schulman’s Queer International.” Electronic Intifada, July 31, 2013.
• Atzmon, Gilad. “Review.” Veterans Today, August 7, 2013.
• Roffman, Eleanor. “Exposing Pinkwashing.” Women’s Review of Books, September/October 2013.
• Gorshein, David. “Review.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13.2 (2014): 313-315.
• Preser, Ruth and Chen Misgav. “Review.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11.1 (2015): 111-3.