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Hana Wirth-Nesher, an author and an English professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel, will give two talks on campus today that are open to the campus community.
She will speak on “Israeli Society in Crisis: Personal Reflections” 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Hillel House, 524 Clinton Terrace. The talk will be followed by an open dinner at 6 p.m. with falafel and pizza.
She also will talk about “Images of Israel in American Jewish Literature” 7:30 p.m. in the Kirby Hall of Civl Rights auditorium. A reception will follow.
“From Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1912) to the most recent fiction by contemporary writers such as Nathan Englander and Allegra Goodman, Jewish American authors have seemed hesitant about representing Israel in their literature,” says Wirth-Nesher, who taught in Lafayette’s English department for nine years. “The most prevalent explanation that has been offered is that Israel challenges their notion of being at home in America, as opposed to being in exile. Since this is not a satisfactory reason for the complex attitude that American Jewish writers have demonstrated regarding Israel, this lecture will offer other reasons as well as an array of intriguing instances, from the past and the present, in which these writers have brought Israel into their literary imaginings.”
Nesher is the author of City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel and a forthcoming work, Call It ‘English’: The Languages of Jewish-American Writing. She has edited numerous books, including What is Jewish Literature? and Jewish-American Autobiography.