I am a literary scholar and cultural historian with specialization in modern Hebrew and multilingual Jewish literature and culture in Palestine/Israel, Europe, and America. I have a joint appointment as a Professor in the departments of Middle East Studies and Judaic Studies, and affiliated with Comparative Literature and Digital Studies. I currently serve as the Associate Director of the Frankel Center. I am a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.
I am the author of two award winning books, A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (NYU Press , 2018; paperback 2019), and Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe (Stanford University Press, 2011). My third book (in progress) is When Yiddish Was Young (about Yiddish in Israeli literature and culture). I am also the editor of Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant (Wayne State University, 2016), In the Place where Sea and Sky Meet: Israeli Yiddish Stories (Magnes Press, forthcoming ), and the co-editor (with Sheila Jelen) of Hebrew, Gender and Modernity: Critical Responses to Dvora Baron’s Fiction (Maryland, 2007). I am the co-director of an international collaborative research project: Below The Line: The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
I publish articles in scholarly journals, as well as in The Washington Post, Ha’aertz, The New Republic, The Jewish Week, and other journals and newspapers. I lecture widely around the world on all aspects of my research and writing, and as part of the the AJS Distinguished Lectureship Program. I teach a variety of courses in English and Hebrew for undergraduate and graduate students. I am also teaching a course abroad in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I integrate technology and Digital Humanities in my scholarship and teaching.
