Dear all,

You are cordially invited to an English Department Seminar with Professor Nancy Berg (University of Washington in St. Louis). 

The Seminar will take place on Tuesday, October 20th, 16:00-18:00 in the Senate Hall (Eshkol Tower, floor 29). 

**Note that the time is different from those in previous years. 

"The Joy of the Essay: Concealment and Revealment”

This talk makes a case for the essay—often overlooked in Modern Hebrew literature—as a fourth genre equal in significance to poetry, fiction, and drama. Capacious and versatile, the genre contains the potential to evoke emotion, reflect on personal and collective experiences, challenge conventional literary boundaries, and invite experimentation. Borrowing narrative techniques from fiction and the linguistic precision and emotional sensitivity of poetry, it remains firmly anchored in reality. At its core, the essay celebrates—and often interrogates—the multiplicity of human experience while searching for points of connection.

Nancy E. Berg, Professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis, is the author of Exile from Exile (SUNY Press, 1996), More and More Equal (Lexington Press, 2005), and numerous essays on Hebrew and Arabic literature appearing in collected volumes and in such journals as AJS Review, Prooftexts, Hebrew Studies, Edebiyat, and the Journal of Arabic Literature. She coedited What We Talk About When We Talk About Hebrew (University of Washington Press, 2018) and Since 1948 with Naomi Sokoloff; with Dina Danon Longing and Belonging and Exile and the Jews with Marc Saperstein (The Jewish Publication Society, 2024). She has held fellowships in Cairo (the Center for Arabic Study Abroad), Jerusalem (the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), and the Herbert Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies (University of Pennsylvania).

 

We look forward to seeing you there! 

Best,

English Department