Michelle Gewurtz
Michelle Gewurtz has been teaching modern art history and curatorial practice at both York University and OCAD University in Toronto since returning to her hometown in January, 2011, after completing her PhD entitled 3 Women/3 Margins: Political Engagement and the Art of Claude Cahun, Jeanne Mammen, and Paraskeva Clark (2011) at the University of Leeds, UK. In the fall of 2011, she became actively involved as a visiting scholar at the Centre for Feminist Research and as an associate of the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, both at York University. Michelle also worked as a curator at the Richmond Art Gallery in British Columbia. She has held curatorial and educational positions in public galleries in Ontario, Canada including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and A Space Gallery. She has maintained an active involvement with A Space, one of the oldest artist-run centres in Canada. She has published curatorial writing including catalogue essays on contemporary Canadian art, as well as review articles on Claude Cahun and Paraskeva Clark. Most recently, she has written about curatorial interventions at the recently re-installed Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. This essay takes a critical look at innovative curatorial strategies implemented within the museum, which are motivated by the institution's desire to be more accessible to diverse populations. She is also an active member of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, which is a collaborative endeavor that brings resources and researchers together to enhance scholarship on historical women artists in Canada. Although Michelle's academic research interests are focused on historical art, she continues to develop a curatorial practice working with contemporary artists. This reflects her view that historical work has important implications for contemporary practice. As a scholar and teacher she is committed to programming and writing about work that is politically engaged, and oriented around non-dominant communities




Nina S. Spiegel
Nina S. Spiegel specializes in Jewish public culture in Israel and America, Jewish dance, and museums and the construction of memory. She holds a PhD in history from Stanford University and has taught at American University, the University of Maryland and Stanford University, as well as served as Curator at the National Museum of American Jewish History. Her book, Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press. The manuscript examines the evolution of Israeli culture while uncovering its connection to the country's social and political dynamics. It received Honorable Mention for the Cashmere Subvention Prize, an award for work that demonstrates innovation in Jewish and Gender Studies. Her two most recently published pieces include an article entitled "New Israeli Rituals: Inventing a Folk Dance Tradition" in Jewish Cultural Studies edited by Simon J. Bronner and a chapter in Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance, edited by Judith Brin Ingber entitled "Cultural Production in Tel Aviv: Yardena Cohen and the National Dance Competition of 1937." Her article on the 1937 National Dance Competition in Mandate Palestine received Honorable Mention for the Raphael Patai Prize in Jewish Folklore and Ethnology. Spiegel has presented her research at conferences including the American Historical Association, the Association for Jewish Studies, the Association for Israel Studies, the Congress on Research in Dance, and the Society of Dance History Scholars. She served on the Board of the Congress on Research in Dance from 2004-2007.




Tamar Barzel
Tamar Barzel is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, where she teaches courses on jazz, klezmer, the music of Cuba and Senegal, punk rock, and the American avant-garde. Her research focuses on New York City's experimentalist downtown music scene, and especially on an artistic and cultural phenomenon of the 1990s known as "Radical Jewish Culture," when many artists turned their attention to writing unconventional music that drew on Jewish music and heritage in idiosyncratic ways, usually outside the sphere of klezmer. She is currently writing a book titled Downtown and Disorderly: 'Radical Jewish Music' and its Discontents on Manhattan's Experimental Music Scene. In this book she explores the relationship between avant-garde aesthetics and Jewish subjectivity, as theorized (through music) by several different artists. She presents her research regularly at conferences, including the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, the American Studies Association, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Jewish Music Forum. Outside the university setting, she has organized events that bring artists and audiences together to discuss music and ideas, including public forums at Kolot Chayenu, a synagogue in Brooklyn, and at the Jewish museum in Paris in 2010. She developed the latter event in conjunction with the museum's new exhibit on "Radical Jewish Culture," which traveled to the Berlin Jewish museum last year. Most recently she published "The Praxis of Composition-Improvisation and the Poetics of Creative Kinship," which is forthcoming from the University of California press in a volume titled Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries. This article argues for the key role played by jazz, both musically and conceptually, in American experimental music. Although the focus is on New York City's downtown scene, the article engage an idea she explores throughout her scholarly work, in which she suggests that jazz's ability to bring the past into dialogue with the present is especially pertinent for artists seeking to develop new ways to engage musically with Jewish heritage.




Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar
Dr. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar was born in Jerusalem and lives there today with her spouse and three children. She has taught at the Ben Gurion University and the Open University and is currently a lecturer at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot, Israel. Her doctoral thesis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was on "Ultra-Orthodox Women and Mass Media in Israel: Exposure Patterns and Reading Strategies." Dr. Neriya-Ben Shahar studied mass media and Internet usage from the perspectives of religion and gender. Her current research project develops an innovative theoretical understanding of the relationship between religion, society, and gender. This study will analyze women's cultural-religious praxes—especially those linked to food: "taking hallah" and "Amens meals". In 2011-2012 Dr. Neriya-Ben Shahar will be in Boston as a Fulbright Post Doctoral Fellowship recipient and Scholar in Residence, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, at Brandeis University.

Past Scholars-in-Residence