International Visitors to Brandeis

Each year, the campus hosts dozens of scholars, artists and leaders from around the world for one-time lectures, extended residencies and visiting faculty appointments. Use the links at the right to navigate through last year's global visitors.

We are currently uploading 2009-10 information. This page might undergo frequent changes as new information becames available. Thank you.

2009-10 Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor of Non-Western Studies

Marysa Navarro Aranguren (Latin American and Latin(o) Studies)
Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor, 2009-10
Argentina

Dr. Navarro is the Charles Collis Professor of History at Dartmouth College where she has taught Latin American history, women’s history, and women’s studies since 1968. She has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles on Argentine history (including a study of Eva Perón and Peronism), Brazilian history, general Latin American history, Latin American feminism, and women’s history. She was elected President of the Latin American Studies Association in 2003. Marysa Navarro will be teaching the course 'Topics in Latin American History' in Spring 2009. (Learn more about Marysa Navarro Aranguren)

2009-10 Visiting Scholars

Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch (Politics)
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, 2009-10

The Schusterman Center's postdoctoral fellow, Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch, comes from the Political Science departments of MIT and Harvard. She earned her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and wrote her dissertation on 'And the Truth Shall Make You Free: The International Norm of Truth-Seeking.'

At Brandeis, she will be teaching the following courses in Politics:

  •     The ‘Special Relationship’: The Role of Interests, Lobbies and Values in US-Israel Relations
  •     Transitional Justice and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Yoram Bilu (Anthropology)
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Visiting Faculty, 2009-10

Dr. Bilu holds a joint appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of Psychology, where he is the Sylvia Bauman Professor, and in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. A clinical psychologist turned anthropologist, he is interested in the interface of culture and psychology as reflected in mental health, folk-religion, and altered states of consciousness. He received the Bahat Prize for his book, The Saint Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel’s Urban Periphery, Haifa University Press (2005).

At Brandeis he will be teaching the following courses in Fall 2009

  •  The Sanctification of Space in Contemporary Israel
  •  Culture and Mental Illness

Maoz Azaryahu (Anthropology)                                                                                                                                     Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Visiting Faculty, 2009-10

Dr. Azaryahu is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. He has written extensively on urban landscapes, memory, and society, and has recently published Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City (2006). He has been a visiting professor at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, Penn State University, and at Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada.

At Brandeis he will be teaching the following courses in Spring 2010

  • Space, Memory and History
  • Mythic Tel Aviv

Gannit Ankori (Art History)
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Visiting Faculty, 2009-10

Gannit Ankori is the Henya Sharef Professor of Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before coming to Brandeis she served as chair of the Department of Art History at Hebrew University. She has been a visiting scholar and associate professor at Harvard University and a visiting associate professor at Tufts University/ School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has published two books and numerous articles on Frida Kahlo (e.g. Imaging Her Selves: Frida Kahlo’s Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation, 2002) and curated the acclaimed museum exhibition Frida Kahlo’s Intimate Family Picture. She has taught and lectured about Israeli and Palestinian art for many years and has published extensively on the visual representation of gender-related issues, the construction of identity, exile, trauma, and hybridity. Her book, Palestinian Art, was published by Reaktion Books, London, in 2006 and is distributed in the US by the University of Chicago Press. She won a Polonsky Prize for Originality and Creativity in the Humanistic Disciplines for this publication. Her forthcoming English-language book, Frida Kahlo, will be published as part of the prestigious Critical Lives series by Reaktion Books in London.


At Brandeis, she plans to offer two courses: The first focuses on art in Israel, and explores Israeli artists of all ethnic backgrounds, emphasizing the Jewish majority and including Bedouin, Druze, Muslim and Christian artists who are also Israeli. A second course will focus on issues related to ‘Trauma and Art’ exploring the dialogue between Israeli art and the international art world.

Jambalmaa Khainzan
Visiting Research Associate in the Scholars Program of the Women's Studies Research Center

 Jambalmaa Khainzan was born and raised in Mongolia, and has an MD from Irkutsk Medical University, in Russia.  She worked with the Mongolian government in food safety, nutrition and water and sanitation programs.  In 2002-06, she was a country project coordinator for the Asian Development Bank Project “Improving Nutrition for poor mothers and children in Central Asia and Mongolia,” a micronutrient initiative in fortified flour and iodized salt and worked as program manager in project development, planning and implementation, monitoring, and evaluation indicator analysis.  Her scientific research includes food safety, nutrition education, micronutrients, prevention of food-borne diseases, risk management, and food quality assurance and she has presented at the 5th World Congress on Foodborne Infections and Intoxications, Berlin, 2004.  After working in the public health sector and a Ph.D. in food safety (1996), she returned to graduate school for more skills, with an M.S. degree in International Health Policy and Management at Brandeis and an M.A. in humanitarian assistance at Tufts. Her realization that policy advocacy and behavior change are the most important ways to change trends, has made this her focus for the health of women and children in remote areas of the world.


Dr. Khainzan's current research is a woman-centered food safety and nutrition model for developing countries, based on analysis of women’s “life contact points” in the food production, processing, storage, and preparation of common foods. A “Women and Safe Food” exhibition intends to raise food safety and nutrition awareness in remote areas of Mongolia, Nepal, and Kazakhstan, to prevent maternal and childhood death from food-borne diseases.

Renana Leviani, Novelist
Hadassah Brandeis Institute Scholar-in-Residence: September-December, 2009.

Renana Leviani is a student in the Department of Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University in the Doctoral Fellowship of Excellence program where she is working on her dissertation. Using a feminist perspective, Renana is examining the moral status of prostitution—particularly claims that would allow the practice on the basis of women's autonomy. Renana received her Masters in Educational Administration and Leadership from Tel Aviv University. An advocate for human rights, Renana produces, edits and hosts a radio program devoted to the topic for Kol HaShalom station in Jerusalem.

Renana Leviani is the Hadassah Brandeis Institute's first Fulbright-HBI Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship scholar.


Keiko Shirakawa (English and American Literature)
Visiting Fulbright Scholar in the Department of English and American Literature

Keiko Shirakawa received her Ph.D. from Keio University, Tokyo in 2003. She is currently an associate professor at Doshisha University in Japan. She is an authority on American popular culture. While at Brandeis, she conducting research on the great seal of the United States, with its bald eagle, and on the importance in American iconography of Sacagewea, the Shosone woman who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their exploration of the West. She is taking courses on eighteenth and nineteenth American literature.

Stefanie Landmann (English and American Literature)
Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of English and American Literature

Stefanie Landmann is a Ph.D student at Heinrich-Heine University (American Literature) where her dissertation focused on 'A Redefinition of the Human in Ecocritical American Literature of the 20th Century'
She has also been a lecturer at the Heinrich-Heine University in Dusseldorf where she taught an Undergraduate Seminar in 19th Century American Nature Writing.

Her research at Brandeis focuses on two main aspects:
1. What is the relationship humans have with the environment in the present - where do we place ourselves in relation to the environment;
2. The poetry of Mary Oliver.

Past Visitors (08-09)


2008-09 Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor of Non-Western Studies

Smita Tewari Jassal (Anthropology and South Asian Studies)
Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor, 2008-09
India

Jassal is author of Daughters of the Earth: Women and Land in Uttar Pradesh (Manohar, New Delhi, 2001) and has co-edited with Eyal Ben-Ari The Partition Motif in Contemporary Conflicts (Sage, New Delhi, 2007). Her forthcoming book, Unearthing Gender, focuses on the oral, folk and narrative traditions of castes and communities of North India. Her research combines historical, anthropological and socio-legal perspectives. Jassal will spend the 08-09 academic year with a co-appointment in the Anthropology Department and the new South Asian Studies Program. She will deliver a public lecture, “Women as Producers: Culture and Agriculture in North India” on September 18, and she will teach the fall course “Gender and Development: Perspectives from South Asia.” (Learn more about Smita Tewari Jassal)

 

2008-09 Visiting Scholars

Gannit Ankori (Art History)
 Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Visiting Faculty, 2008-09
Hebrew University, Israel

The chair of the Department of Art History at Hebrew University, Ankori's research includes two books on Frida Kahlo and the acclaimed musuem exhibition "Frida Kahlo's Intimate Family Picture."At Brandeis, Ankori will teach two courses on Israeli art and multi-ethnic experiences surrounding the art. (Learn more about Gannit Ankori)

Andrea Bertello (Sustainable International Development)
Sustainable International Development Engaged Scholar
Italy

Bertello will teach a graduate-level seminar in renewable energy.

Corrine Ducey (Russian/Holocaust Studies)
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholar-in-Residence, January - May 2009
University of Nottingham, England

Part of the new HBI Seminar Series, Ducey will spend her time at Brandeis giving lectures and conducting research on representations of Anne Frank in literature and culture, and the enduring images of the Holocaust from different perspectives. (Learn more about Corrine Ducey)

Benjamin Gidron (Organizational Management)
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Visiting Faculty, 2008-09
Heller School for Social Policy and Management
Hornstein Professional Jewish Leadership Program
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Benjamin Gidron is director of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research and the School of Management at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He teaches courses on human service organizations, non-profit organizations, and third sector organizations, and recently won an award for Innovation in Third Sector research from Ben Gurion University. (Learn more about Benjamin Gidron)

Hagar LahavHagar Lahav (Journalism, Communication)
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholar-in-Residence, January - May 2009
Sapir Academic College, Israel

Lahav is head of the journalism program in the School of Communication at Sapir Academic College. She specializes in feminist politics, journalism studies, and feminist media studies. While at Brandeis, Lahav will research 20th century Jewish thinkers that were inspired by Hassidic and Psycho-Kabbalh mysticism, examining the idea that perceptions of God can empower secular women's self-autonomy. She will also participate in the HBI Seminar Series. (Learn more about Hagar Lahav)

Maina Chawla Singh (Israeli-Indian Studies)
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholar-in-Residence, September - October, 2008
University of Delhi, India

Singh's research focuses on the community of Indian Jews in Israel; she will undertake a project titled Migration, Ethnicity, and Gender: Indian Jews in Israel intended as an edited volume. Singh currently teaches at the College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi, and is the author of Gender, Religion, and "Heathern Lands:" American Missionary Women in South Asia (1860s - 1940s) (2000). (Learn more about Maina Chawla Singh)

Michal Ben Ya'akov (History)
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholar-in-Residence, Summer 2009
Efrata College for Education, Israel

Michal Ben Ya'akov researches 19th and 20th century Eretz-Israel, with special emphasis on North African and Sephardi Jewry. Her project will examine the changing lives of Jewish immigrant widows from North Africa living in the various urban centers of 19th-century Palestine. (Learn more about Michal Ben Ya'akov)

 

2008-09 Short-term Residencies

Alexandra Freund
Professor of Psychology
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Late Sept./early Oct., 2008

Prof. Freund studies cognition across the lifespan and lifelong learning. She will be visiting the Emotion Lab of Prof. Derek Isaacowitz in fall 2008.

Helene H. Fung
Associate Professor of Psychology
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Late Aug., 2008

Fung visited Brandeis in late summer 2008 as part of the Brandeis - Hong-Kong Aging Research Exchange project.

Fu Youde Fu Youde
Director of the Center for Judaic Studies
Shandong University, China
Sept. 4 - 12, 2008

Fu Youde is a Chinese scholar who writes about Confucianism and Jewish philosophy. He will give public lecture and teach-ins about religion and ethics.

 

2008-2009 Visiting Global Specialists

Ornit Barkai, Filmmaker
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholars-in-Residence, June - August 2009

Barkai, whose filmmaking credits include the documentaries From Anne Frank's Window and Let Them Fly, will carry out pre-production research for a documentary film on "The Polaccas", young women from the shtetls of Eastern Europe who were forced into prostitution in Argentina and Braxil during the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Learn more about Ornit Barkai)

Sheila Donio, Theater Artist and Playback Theater trainee
CIEE Trainee in Arts and Social Transformation, Slifka Program, 2008-09

Bio coming soon.

Shulamit Gilboa, Poet, Novelist, and Journalist
Hadassah-Brandeis Scholar-in-Residence, September - December 2008

Gilboa is the author of Four Men and a Woman (2000) and Alma's Way (2003), both award-winners from the Book Publishers Association. Since 1984, she has been deputy literary editor and since 2005 literary editor in chief of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. While at Brandeis, Gilboa will give lectures and prepare and write her next novel, to take place in Israel and Boston. (Learn more about Shulamit Gilboa)

Etgar Keret, Author and Filmmaker
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Writer in Residence, October 2008

Keret is internationally acclaimed for his short stories. His book,The Nimrod Flip-Out, which was published in 2006, is a collection of 32 short stories that captures the craziness of life in Israel today. His books are bestsellers in Israel, and have been published in 22 languages. As a filmmaker, Keret is the writer of several feature screenplays, including Skin Deep (1996). At Brandeis, he will present a creative writing workshop, a Hebrew class visit, deliver a public lecture on his writing, and screen his film Jellyfish. (Learn more about Etgar Keret)

Ronit Matalon, Author
Schusterman Center for Israel Studies Writer in Residence, September 2008

Matalon will give several lectures in English and Hebrew to classes on campus, and a public lecture and book signing on September 24. Matalon published two novels, one book of short stories, a collection of essays and a book for children. A Story that Begins with a Snake`s Funeral has been made into a film. (Learn more about Ronit Matalon)

Shuba Mudgal, Musician
MusicUnitesUS Intercultural Residency, October 2008

One of India's most celebrated artists and composers, Mudgal will visit Brandeis for a series of interactive performances, workshops, and class discussions. (View music clips and more information at her web site)

Brian WilliamsDr. Brian Williams, World Health Organization
Chemistry; International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life Distinguished Visiting Practitioner, February 2008

Williams, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, will visit campus to address the issue of "human rights" versus "public health" approaches to the management of disease. More information coming soon. (Learn more about Brian Williams)

Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru)
Cultural Production; International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, October 2008

Yuyachkani is scheduled to return to campus in October 2008 for a series of workshops.

 

Visiting Scholar Programs & Research Fellows

Past Visitors (07-08)
Short-term Residencies

MusicMusicians Jiebing Chen and Yangqin Zhao (China)
 March 2008
Celebrated classical artists Jiebing Chen and Yangqin Zhao will arrive at Brandeis in the spring as part of the MusicUnitesUS series and the Brandeis Theater performance of the "Orphan of Zhao".

Afro-Brazilian Music and Dance Ensemble Ologundê (Brazil)
October 2007
Music UnitesUS brought the New York-based Ologundê ensemble to Brandeis to celebrate the rich Afro-Brazilian culture of Salvador, Bahia through a diverse repertoire of music, dance and martial arts.

yuyachkaniGrupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru)
October 2007
As part of the international conference "Acting Together on the World Stage: Setting the Scene for Peace," visitors Yuyachkani, an independent theater group from Peru, performed works, shared documentaries, led workshops and discussed the contributions of the group to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation process.

2007-2008 Visiting Global Specialists

Forensic Anthropologist Dr. William Hagland
November 2007
During a four-day residency at Brandeis from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, forensic anthropologist Dr. William Haglund spoke about his work at mass grave sites and its implications for international justice and offered students insights on a career investigating the aftermath of mass violence and genocide. The Ethics Center’s second annual Distinguished Visiting Practitioner, Haglund serves as senior forensic consultant, and from 1998 to 2006 was director of the International Forensic Program for Physicians for Human Rights.