Upcoming Events

"Playback Paralysis" by Iddo Gruengard
At a glance:
- Performing Disability in Israel - April 22
- Zionist Phantom Exhibit Launch and Artist Talk - April 26
- Dana Arieli Artist Workshop - April 27
Enjoy academic presentations?
- Our Schusterman Seminars bring you the latest research.
Watch past events:
- Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch recordings of a large selection of our events, and to be notified when new recordings are posted.
Spring 2021

"Playback Paralysis" by Iddo Gruengard
April 22, 2021
2:00 - 3:00 PM EST
via Zoom
This lecture is the final event in a two-part series — held in conjunction with Professor Ilana Szobel’s course, Disability Cultures: Art, Film, and Literature of People with Disabilities — that explores real-life experiences and artistic performances of people living with disability in Israel. Artists, writers, and scholars will examine the intersection of disability with Zionist ideology, gender, race, and class. Our presenters, thus, will examine the ways performance of disability on stage, on the screen, and in everyday life raises questions about Israeli subjectivity.
Presented by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and cosponsored by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute; the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies; the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy; and the Program in Health: Science, Society, and Policy (HSSP), all housed at Brandeis University.
April 22, 2:00 - 3:00 PM EDT
In the Kingdom of Fever: Tradition, Tuberculosis, and the Creation of Yiddish Poetry
Register
Sunny Yudkoff is an assistant professor at The University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of Tubercular Capital: Illness and the Conditions of Modern Jewish Writing, winner of the 2018 Salo Wittmayer Baron Book Prize (Stanford University Press, 2018).
Previous event:
March 11
Disability On and Off-Stage in Israel and the US: Blind Women’s Gender Performance and Integrated Dance
Gili Hammer is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of "Blindness through the Looking Glass: The Performance of Blindness, Gender, and the Sensory Body" (University of Michigan Press, 2019).
April 26, 2021
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM ET
Register
The Zionist Phantom
by Dana Arieli
A virtual exhibition presented by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. Curated by Rotem Rozental.
The Israeli landscape is haunted by ghosts. Assembling what she refers to as “a worldview,” Dana Arieli shapes a panoramic view of a landscape defined by the uneasy presence of its missing limbs. The idea of the phantom reflects what should have been there. Going beyond a sense of longing, the phantom embodies a sensory experience: what the mind wants to see or hear, what it is convinced—even momentarily—is, in fact, there. And yet, we tend to discover, the sound or sight are a misunderstanding, an internal malfunction. More than conveying what was there, the phantom experience exhumes what will never return.
We are so excited to launch our very first virtual exhibition! Join us for a candid artist talk with Professor Dana Arieli, Design Faculty, Holon Institute of Technology and Mandel Center for Leadership in the Negev, and curator Dr. Rotem Rozental, Chief Curator and Senior Director of Arts and Culture at American Jewish University.
Cosponsored by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and the Consulate General of Israel to New England. Free and open to all. Registration required.
Part of the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, which takes place April 25-May 1, 2021 at Brandeis University.

Dana Arieli
April 27, 2021
12:00 - 2:00 PM ET
Register
Guided by Professor Dana Arieli, participants will be invited to select images from the project and to respond to them with their own texts, reflecting their impressions, emotions or memories. The written responses will be added to the exhibition webpage.
Free and open to all. Registration required.

Schusterman Seminars
If you enjoy academic presentations, we encourage you to join us for our biweekly Schusterman Seminars. These are advanced seminars geared toward faculty and graduate students, and open to all, presenting the latest research in Israel Studies to the Schusterman Center community and beyond. See the schedule.