Mosse Scholarship

Subject: Key Concepts of Shaping the Discourse of Modern German Identity: Trends and Evolution in German Film Remakes 

Supervisor: Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi

Abstract: My research will be based upon a broad comparative analysis of German film-remakes, in order to refine the categories, concepts, and keywords constituting the modern German identity discourse, from the final years of the nineteenth century to the post-Cold War Germany. 
Based on current approaches to film analysis, my interpretation of the films will place the different versions in the various historical circumstances in which they were created. Through highlighting the modifications and recurrences in the different versions, I intend to outline the development of the German identity discourse throughout the twentieth century, including its contradictions, conflicts, and continuities.

Bio: I completed my B.A. and M.A. studies at the Hebrew University's History Department.

Mosse Stipend 2019/20

Supervisor: Prof. Dror Wahrman

Abstract: The research will evolve around the question of how these collectors of Cabinets of wonders organized their knowledge and defined the objects categorical boundaries. Based on these questions the research will try to answer the questions how the parts of the collections became knowledge and what was the ''Weltanschauung'' (worldview) of these collectors.

The research will present a social history of knowledge based on the microcosm of collectors and their Cabinets of wonders and will deal with the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, its 'construction' and 'production' and with practices such as classification and experiments. The group of collectors will be analyzed according the theories of the “New sociology of knowledge” and in particular the approach of micro-sociology which is concerned with the everyday life of small groups, circles, networks or 'epistemological communities' and sees those as the fundamental units which construct knowledge and directs its diffusion through certain channels. These 'epistemological communities' are often studied through the micro-spaces in which they work. In the research the micro space will be relations between the collectors and their buying agents on the one hand and the relations between the collectors themselves and the collectors and scholars.

Short bio: I emigrated 9 years ago to Israel from Switzerland.

Mosse Stipend 2016/17

Topic:  Public Opinion Polling and the Future(s) of the German Democratic Republic, 1966–1989

Supervisor:  Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi

Bio: I am a research student in history, focusing mainly on cultural history, Alltagsgeschichte, and knowledge production in Cold War Germany. I obtained my BA and MA from the same department and from the HUJI Institute of History Honors Program. I also participated in the Mandel School MA Honors Program, and am a fellow at the Koebner Center for German History. Between the years 2019-2021 I served as editor-in-chief of the student journal "Hayo Haya – a Young Forum for History." Beside my research, I am interested in cinema, socialism, and urban planning.

Abstract:  My dissertation will explore the widespread phenomenon of public opinion polling in East Germany and the multiple roles it played in the effort to sustain and reform the state’s power structure between the mid-1960s and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Through an analysis of the surveys and reports produced by the state-sanctioned social research institutes, I aim to establish the centrality of this method to the cultural, social, and political history of the German Democratic Republic and to understand the ways in which it was used by citizens in unexpected ways to imagine the future(s) of the GDR.

Publications:
Geller, Mor. “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Socialism: Education and Entertainment in the Musical Film Heißer Sommer (GDR, 1968).” Slil – Journal for History, Film, and Television (Forthcoming). [in Hebrew]

Mosse Stipend 2021/22

Subject: The Nabataean Realm in Late Antiquity: the provinces of Arabia and Palaestina tertia

Supervisor: Prof. Oded Irshai  

Abstract: My research deals with the Nabataean realm (the Negev, the Sinai peninsula and southern Transjordan) in late antiquity, between the 4th-7th centuries CE. I aim at reconstructing the process which this region and its inhabitants went through, following their annexation to the Roman Empire: Christianization (the transition from the Nabataean religion to Christianity), Hellenization (the establishment of Greek language and culture) and urbanization (the foundation of urban settlements and their economic basis). The research draws in particular upon the papyri from Nessana and Petra, as well as inscriptions and relevant literary sources.  

Bio: I have a BA in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE program) from the Hebrew University. I did my MA in the department of History as a fellow of the programme for the Study of Late Antiquity and its Legacy. My MA thesis dealt with the impact of pilgrimage on the settlement of the Negev in Byzantine and early Muslim periods, drawn mainly on the Nessana papyri.  
I am interested in the social and cultural history of the land of Israel and the Near East in the Roman, Byzantine and early Muslim periods, especially in documentary evidence, i.e. papyri and inscriptions, from this area.
I am a research assistant at the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, a joint project of the Hebrew University and the University of Cologne, Germany.  

Mosse Stipend 2017/18