Wandering beyond the Boundaries: Defining the Natural in Jewish and Modern Hebrew Literature

The CERMOM has the pleasure to invite you to the international conference "Wandering beyond the Boundaries: Defining the Natural in Jewish and Modern Hebrew Literature" in November 25th and 26th.

Program: 

November 25, Monday

13h : Registration and Lunch

14h30 : Greetings and Opening Remarks

14h45 : Session 1: THE NATURAL WORLD IN PREMODERN JEWISH LITERATURE 

Chair: Dorit Lemberger

  • The Serpent in the Talmud | Giuseppe Veltri, Hamburg University
  • Preeminent in Leprosy: The Grotesque as a Metaphor for Human-Nature Relations in the Babylonian Talmud | Yael Bruchim, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  • Isn’t the Sky? New Perspectives on Hebrew Garden Poetry of Al-Andalus Yarden Ben Tzur, Tel Aviv University
  • The Rabbi of Animals: The Hagiographic Character of the Hassidic Rebbe David of Lelov as a Dialogical Righteous Man of Man-Nature | Zeev Kitsis, Bar-Ilan University

16h45 : Coffee break

17h : Session 2: LITERARY ANIMALS 

Chair: Raffaele Esposito

  • Orpaz’s Animals Anna Lissa, Université Paris 8 – Inalco, Cermom
  • Some Reflections on The Bear by Assaf Schur: Or the Natural History of Zionist State | Noam Pines, University at Buffalo
  • Dinka’s Language in Someone to Run with: The Theory of Speech-Acts as a Literary Method | Dorit Lemberger, Bar-Ilan University
  • Their Voyage Out: Life and Death through Animality in the Writing of Virginia Woolf and Sami Berdugo | Riki Traum Avidan, Ramapo College of New Jersey

19h30 : Dinner

 

November 26, Tuesday

09h30 : Session 3: ECOCRITICISM AND ECOPOETICS IN YIDDISH AND HEBREW LITERATURE

Chair: Vered Karti Shemtov

  • Early Environmentalism in the Early Work of Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh | Shai Abadi, Levinsky-Wingate Academic Center
  • Animals Protest against Their Victimization in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature | Naama Harel, Columbia University
  • Attitude to the Custom of Atonement in Agnon's Work | Dan Misheiker, Levinsky College
  • The Golden Peacock: An Eternal Flight between Life and Death | Aviv Livnat, Tel Aviv University & New York University

11h30 : Coffee Break

12h : Session 4: Climate Change and Speculative Fiction

Chair: Shai Abadi

  • Human Parts: A Discussion of Orly Castel Bloom's Book in the Context of   Climate Crises | Oshrat Lopez, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
  • Blurring Symbolic Boundaries between Center and Periphery through Climate Change Discourse in Israel and Hebrew Fiction | Ilanit Ben Dor Derimian, Université de Lille SHS
  • No Longer a Land of Milk and Honey: Hostile Nature in Hebrew Speculative Fiction | Raffaele Esposito, University of Naples L’Orientale

13h : Lunch 

15h : Session 5: THE POETRY OF NATURE / THE NATURE OF POETRY

Chair: Ilanit Ben Dor Derimian

  • The Anger of Nature: A Reading in Chaim Nachman Bialik's “I Knew in a Night of Fog” | Vered Karti Shemtov, Stanford University
  • Bent is the Smell of the Yakantalisa: The (Un)natural World in Hezy Leskly’s Poetry | Jonatan Tadmor, Stanford University
  • “Adjectives Stretch like Cats": The Role of the Animal in Zuzanna Ginczanka’s Poetic Language | Gilad Shiram, Stanford University

16h30 : Coffee Break

17h : Session 6: ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY IN MODERN HEBREW PROSE

Chair: Oshrat Lopez                 

  • Vibrant Matter Writing: Eco-Ethical Possibilities in Shimon Adaf’s Work | Danny   Luzon, Haifa University
  • Odors, Nature and Nativity in 1960’s Hebrew Prose | Tal Yehezkely, Tel Aviv  University
  • "Everyone Out of the Tree": Nature and People, Word and Image in Etgar Keret’s "Shesek" | Ronit Rapp, David Yellin College of Education

18h30 : Final remarks