Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

Maham received her BA in International Studies from the University of Chicago in 2013 where she focused her thesis on citizenship and refugee rights in Bangladesh. She has since worked at the American Bar Foundation as a research analyst. She hopes to use her background in international studies, human rights, and constitutional law to study political membership in Israel.

Yair Bar Zuri is interested in modern Jewish philosophy and history, in particular the cultural aspects of Zionism. In his doctoral work, he plans to explore the secularization of Jewish culture as a significant element of the Zionist project, through interdisciplinary approaches to secularity in sociology, history and philosophy. His main focus is on the attempt to renew Jewish culture in the Zionist project, by delving deeper into the character of Jewish myth as it is portrayed in the writings of different Zionist scholars.

Born in Israel and raised in Japan, Shirah completed her undergraduate studies in liberal arts at Doshisha University in Kyoto, during which she also spent time at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her main interest is the influence of nationalism on literature, in particular on literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She wrote her honor's thesis on the influence of nationalism on the development of modern Hebrew and modern Japanese literatures. In her graduate studies, she will delve deeper into this topic, focusing on Hebrew, Japanese, and English literatures.

Robert received his MA in History from Baylor University, where he wrote his thesis on British security and counter-insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. He also worked in Baylor's Institute for Oral History on the Texas Liberators Oral History Project. Robert's research interests include military history and foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly Mandatory Palestine and Israel during the Cold War. His research at Brandeis is focused on British security strategy in the first months of the first Arab-Israeli war, from November 1947-May 1948.

Maya grew up in Atlit, Israel, a tiny coastal town outside Haifa. Always interested in literature and its relation to the formation of ethnic identities, she majored in both Cultural Anthropology and English Literature at the University of Oregon. She received her Masters at Brandeis in Comparative Humanities, producing a Capstone thesis with the title: White Kids Fight Dragons, Black Kids Fight Drugs; the Intersectionality of Childhood and Race in Children’s Literature. In her doctoral work she plans to continue her research into the use of pedagogical narrative in the formation of ethnic and national identities not only in the US, but also in Israel and Palestine. See her profile.

Rima Farah is pursuing a doctoral degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. Her research revolves around the cultural and political history of the modern Middle East and Israel, with an emphasis on the history of minorities, and on their ethnic, national and religious identities. Rima is conducting research for her dissertation on the history of the development of Christian society in Israel, particularly on the conflicting narratives among Christians on their ethnicity and cultural history in an Arab Muslim society and a Jewish state. She holds a BA in French and English  language and literature, and an MA in  Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the University of Haifa, the city where she was born and raised, as well as holding an MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. She teaches Hebrew at Brandeis University and Middlebury College. She is fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and she has a good knowledge of French.

Eva is currently a visiting scholar at the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley. Working at the intersection of cultural history and political theology, her dissertation examines a group of hegemonic Israeli literary and public figures who converted from 'left' to 'right' wing in the aftermath of the 1967 war, paving the way for the Israeli right wing and the settlement movement as we know it today. Her research interests include Jewish political thought, religious and secular messianism, gender and nationalism, place studies, as well as Israeli and Palestinian visual arts and literature. Eva speaks fluent Hebrew and Russian, has advanced proficiency in Yiddish, and is gaining proficiency in German.

Mika holds an MA in Politics from Brandeis University, an MA from the University of Haifa in Peace and Conflict Management, as well as an honors degree from the University of Cape Town in Justice and Transformation and a BA from the University of Auckland in Politics and History. She specializes in Comparative Politics and her research interests include comparative regime types; democratic transition and consolidation; democratic regime persistence; the impact of extremism on democratic states; and militant democracy. Utilizing a comparative perspective, her research will examine differing notions of militant democracy and its application in, and to, Israel.

Iddo received his BA in Jewish Thought and Political Science and MA in Political Science (both Magna Cum Laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked for several years at Yad Vashem. His research interests focus on the theological frameworks and concepts developed by thinkers within the religious-Zionist labor movement in British Mandatory Palestine. He is interested in the integration of religious traditionalism, Zionism, modernism and social-democratic ideas by individuals affiliated with the 'Torah VeAvodah' movement in the interwar period and in the implications of that integration to contemporary dilemmas facing the Israeli society.  

Ari's fields of specialization include the history of Zionism, contemporary Orthodox Judaism, Israeli foreign policy, and the modern Middle East. He is writing his dissertation on the role of the National Religious Party and the Chief Rabbinate in the Egyptian-Israeli peace process of 1977-1982. He holds a BA (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and an MA from Queens College, CUNY, where he developed undergraduate and high school curricula on American relations with the Middle East, and the Arab-Israeli conflict for the Center for Ethnic, Racial and Religious Understanding.

Karen is writing her dissertation on institutional Jewish childhood in Palestine/Israel between 1918 and 1948. Her research explores Zionist, Jewish and American Jewish views of child-rearing, identity, and education, as well as the effects of state-building and the Holocaust on orphaned and disadvantages children. In 2016 she will be teaching part of the NEJS class on "The Destruction of European Jewry." Her languages include Hebrew, Slovak and German.