On Wednesday, November 30, we welcomed Danielle Drori, a winner of the 2022 Warren & Susan Stern New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award, to the Institute for an in-person lecture.
Dr. Drori’s lecture examines the relationship between translation and Zionism, showing how early Zionist thought in Hebrew relied on translation as both a metaphor for the so-called Zionist return to origin and an effective device for disseminating nationalist sentiment. While scholars of Zionism have argued that early Zionist thinkers translated European nationalist thought into a Jewish idiom, few have asked what Zionism may teach us about translation as a driving force in Jewish intellectual history. This lecture suggests that translation functioned as the comfort zone of early Zionist thought: a locus where Zionist thinkers could feel neither fully Western nor fully Eastern, both European and non-European, victors and victims.
This lecture was broadcast virtually using Facebook Live, and a recording of that stream is available in full below.
Danielle Drori completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. She has taught courses on literary theory, modern Jewish literatures, nationalism, and gender at the University of Oxford, New York University, the City College of New York, and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she is currently Associate Faculty. Her writing has appeared in several academic and popular publications, including Prooftexts, Dibur, Popula, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
This lecture was supported by the Warren & Susan Stern New Perspectives in Jewish Studies Award.