Naama Harel

Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Language, Hebrew Language Program Coordinator
212-854-6668
nh2508@columbia.edu

Naama Harel specializes in Modern Hebrew literature, Modern Jewish literature, and Israeli culture, as well as Human-Animal Studies, ecocriticism, and posthumanism. She holds a Ph.D. in Hebrew and Comparative Literature from the University of Haifa. She is the author of Kafka’s Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier (University of Michigan Press, 2020), and The Jew, the Beauty, and the Beast: Gender and Animality in Modernist Hebrew Fiction (Rutgers University Press, 2025). Her current book project, Of Slaughter, explores literary representations of Jewish ritual slaughterers and slaughtered animals. She has published various scholarly articles on related themes, including compassion for animals (Tza’ar ba’alei chayim) in Hebrew revival literature, metamorphosis tales, anthropomorphism, humanimal hybridity and liminality, and species fluidity.