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headshot of Lior Libman

Lior Libman

Associate Professor of Israel Studies/ Associate Director of the Center for Israel Studies

Judaic Studies

Background

Lior Libman is a literary scholar and cultural historian specializing in Modern Hebrew and Israeli Literatures and Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Socialist Zionism and the Kibbutz Movement. She teaches various courses on Israeli Literature from 1948 to the present, which explore questions of nation-building, class, conflict, gender and ethnicity. Her current work focuses on the imagery and political imagination of the kibbutz in the years of the transition form the pre-State yishuv to the State of Israel. Parts of it have been published in Iyunim Bitkumat Israel (Studies in Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel) and Journal of Badiou Studies. Libman is a Member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Israel Studies, and co-directs the Literature and Culture Section of its Annual Conferences.

Education

  • PhD, MA, BA: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Research Interests

  • Modern Hebrew Literature
  • Israeli Literature
  • Kibbutz and Socialist-Zionism's Literature
  • Cultural and Intellectual History
  • Literature and Cultural History in the formative years of Israeli statehood

Teaching Interests

  • Intro to Israeli Literature
  • The Israeli Palestinian Conflict in Literature
  • The Kibbutz in Israeli Culture

Awards

    • Spring 2020: The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) Binghamton University Faculty Fellowship. Project Title: “The Politics of Signification in Early Israeli Literature.”
    • Spring 2017: The Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies University of Michigan - Ann Arbor Research Fellowship. Research Group: "Israeli Histories Societies and Cultures: Comparative Approaches"; Research Project: "Jews in Harness: The Socialist-Zionist Labor Movement and Hasidism".
    • 2014-2016: Israel Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies University College London.
    • 2013: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The Haim and Miriam Greenstein Prize for the Research of the History of the Land of Israel since the 19th Century.
    • 2013: Harvard University Department for Comparative Literature Institute for World Literature Full Tuition Scholarship.
    • 2012-2013: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Gisela Gross and Edward Gross Doctoral Fellowship for Hebrew Literature and Jewish Thought.
    • 2012-2013: Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem, Doctoral Workshop Fellowship.
    • 2012: The Wolf Foundation Scholarship for Outstanding Doctoral Candidates.
    • 2009-2014: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem President's Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Candidates in the Humanities.
    • 2007-2009: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem / University of Wisconsin - Madison, History Department, George L. Mosse Fellowship.