PhD honors 2016/17

Supervisor: Prof. Leona Toker

Abstract: This dissertation studies the revisions made by William Wordsworth to Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage, the works whose early versions are, to a large extent, his response to the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution. The revisions made by the poet to these three works in the course of his life, during which his ideological, moral, political and poetical principles underwent changes, are sometimes radical. This study demonstrates how his evolving worldview is reflected in his textual changes. The revisions also show how Wordsworth’s experience of the French Revolution influenced not only his early political inclinations and poetic vocation but also many of his responses to political events in his conservative years and thus his later poetry. Hence, among other things, my research supports the position of those literary critics who deny that Wordsworth’s poetry elides its political moment: his early works do respond to the political and historical events of the time of their composition.  
    Pace New Criticism, which marginalizes the author’s intention or rather seeks to separate the artist and his works in accordance with the critique of the intentional fallacy, I argue that in order to understand what stimulated the composition of Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage, and what later motivated the revisions made to these poems, we may seek suggestions from Wordsworth’s life even at the risk of disturbing his image as an extraordinary being.
     The three works, initially composed in the 1790s, mark a turning point in Wordsworth’s poetic progress. It was only after his return to England from France in 1792, during cycles of his hope and despair, that his genuine voice emerged. None of the poems written prior to Salisbury Plain manifests the revolutionary power of his poetic genius. Salisbury Plain, The Borderers and The Ruined Cottage form the foundation of Wordsworth’s life-long defence of humanity in general and the people of the lower classes in particular. Moreover, it is through these works that the poet’s philosophical vision of the oneness of the human heart with nature ripens, in his attempts to come to terms with the human condition and place suffering in a framework which facilitates coping with it.
     Evidence in Wordsworth’s correspondence suggests that in 1798, while working on The Ruined Cottage, he was also thinking about Adventures on Salisbury Plain and The Borderers. Rather than finishing one poem, laying it aside and taking up another, he simultaneously worked on the three, which explains some of the similarities in their thematic concerns and style. Yet the move from Salisbury Plain to The Borderers attests to changes in Wordsworth’s attitude to such issues as motivation, intention, crime, punishment, political institutions and formal law. Furthermore, whereas after 1799 Wordsworth never attributed importance to either Adventures on Salisbury Plain or The Borderers till the decision was made to publish them in 1842, The Ruined Cottage preoccupied him for the rest of his life. 
     The study of the development of the early versions of the three works reveals the maturation of Wordsworth’s art and the evolution of some aspects of his political and philosophical stance. He gradually becomes a poet of the human psyche. Whereas the early version of Salisbury Plain shares some features with contemporary protest poems, in his revisions Wordsworth transcends the political and social focus of protest poetry in probing the inner lives of his suffering characters, with an emphasis on guilt and fear. Conveying tension between reason and emotions, he works out emotivist principles in the ethical positions that transpire from his works as well as in his literary theory, unifying his axiology. He also resolves his attitude to such issues as compassion, remorse, penitence and justice. The Wanderer, as The Ruined Cottage was titled in 1814, serves as a step towards a larger work which would grant completion to Wordsworth’s philosophical and ideological principles. The alterations made for the 1814 version facilitate its incorporation into the design of The Recluse, the poet’s planned philosophical work about man’s relation to nature and society. 
      Wordsworth endorsed a succession of political and philosophical identities, moving from liberal republicanism to Godwinian rationalism to the transcendental philosophy of the One Life and eventually to political and religious conservatism. His longevity as well as shifts in his socio-economic condition made axiological changes possible. By his seventies he had become a rather conservative financially secure family man in the government employ. In 1843, the poet who had once declared that he abhorred monarchy became Queen Victoria’s Poet Laureate. Wordsworth did not deny that he was changing. Time-induced changes constitute recurrent thematic concerns in many of his works. In 1801 he noted that his early poems represented opinions widely different from those that he held at present. In The Prelude the speaker repeatedly observes that youth played a significant role in his early judgments. The mainstream public opinion of Wordsworth changed as well. By the late 1830s, those attributes of his poetry which had once been scorned by many came to be identified as the sources of his strength. His poetry was constantly quoted, and his works were acknowledged as intellectual stimuli. This new status imposed new obligations. 
     My research examines the ways in which these biographical factors may have influenced the revisions of Wordsworth’s early works, revisions that affected the fashioning of his image for posterity. 
     The changes which some of Wordsworth’s principles underwent are evident in the revisions that he made to the poems that he had written in his twenties but published in his seventies. In 1842, when he published his earlier radical, pantheistic and revolutionary anti-war poetry, such as Salisbury Plain, in Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, he omitted, added or rewrote complete verse paragraphs, as well as separate lines and words. Guilt and Sorrow; or Incidents upon Salisbury Plain and (to a smaller degree) The Borderers were so altered that they revealed little or nothing of Wordsworth’s erstwhile radicalism. This was followed by the 1845 publication of the likewise heavily revised version of The Excursion, of which the first book had started as The Ruined Cottage in 1797. By this time, in addition to other changes in his status, Wordsworth was also held in reverence as a conservative Christian poet. He now had to and probably wished to conform to what was required of him as a public figure. Drawing attention to his political past or reviving its spirit would have been counterproductive. The study of Wordsworth’s revisions suggests that he might have mitigated his earlier radicalism by self-censorship.  
      When the conformist elderly poet excised those cultural cues that anchored the poems in the historical context of the reactionary 1790s, he altered the portrayal of characters, their interactions, conversations and the nature of their relationships. Sometimes such changes cause inconsistencies and logical contradictions in the plot and the arguments made in the poems. Even when no drastic changes in thematic concerns are detected between two versions, changes in emphasis or word order indicate different attitudes or altered states of mind. The later version of The Borderers, for instance, seems to enhance the play’s philosophical concerns at the expense of the psychological ones. Although the revisions sometimes attest to major ideological changes, the earlier and later versions of the poems share thematic concerns, which points to a continuity in the poet’s preoccupations.
     Comparing the published versions with the earlier manuscript ones, this study considers whether the revisions serve to adapt Wordsworth’s early works, directly related to his moral crisis in France and suffused with republican opinions, to engagement with newly emerging social and political affairs, such as the contemporary debates concerning the Poor Laws and the abolition of the death penalty. The changes in the poet’s attitude explain how Salisbury Plain and The Borderers accrued different meanings when, as a political figure, he started serving different causes, some diametrically opposite to those of his early years. The new versions are not only geared up to the context of 1842 but also praise the selfsame institutions which Wordsworth had earlier abhorred.
     Wordsworth’s 1842 revisions also reflect changes in aesthetic preferences. In his later years he disavowed that principle on which his poetics was founded; namely, to write in ordinary language for ordinary people. Rather, he resorted to eloquent sometimes artificial language which suits élite expectations. Judging by his own criteria, with which some literary critics agree and some do not, the later versions have a greater aesthetic merit. This claim is examined in the dissertation.

Bio: I am interested in the Romantic period. I love excursions in nature. I have a husband, a son and a dog.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Prof. Edwin Seroussi

Abstract: My study will address the liturgical music of the Judeo-Iraqi synagogues in the neighborhoods of Mahane Yehuda, Beit Yisrael and Gonenim in Jerusalem. While many religious customs of the Babylonian Jewry are consciously preserved in the synagogues, the liturgical music in these synagogues reflects two opposing forces. On the one hand, in some synagogues the unique musical traditions of the Babylonian Jews are zealously preserved, particularly on Tisha B'Av and on the High Holy Days. On the other hand, in other synagogues the dominant musical style is the Jerusalem-Sephardic. The Jerusalem-Sephardic musical style, which developed in Jerusalem, has gained a wide circulation in the last few decades through the radio, the Internet, public concerts and Jewish music schools, and has become hegemonic among the Sephardic Jews from the Middle East, erasing other musical traditions. My research will attempt to gain a deeper understanding on the experience of the community members in preserving the musical-liturgical traditions of the Jews of Baghdad, while taking part in shaping the local hegemonic Sephardi-Yerushalmi style.

Bio: Netanel Cohen is a first year doctoral student in the department of musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is writing his dissertation under the guidance of Professor Edwin Seroussi on the liturgical music of the Iraqi Jews in Jerusalem. He holds an M. A. degree in ethnomusicology and a B. A. degree in musicology and Iranian studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include Middle Eastern Jewish liturgical music and Iranian music.

He served as a librarian in the music department of the National Library of Israel and as an instructor of Persian music theory in the Center for Middle Eastern Classical Music in Jerusalem. He also plays the santur (the Persian hammered dulcimer) and is a cantor in the Sephardic-Yerushalmi style.

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Dr. Eitan Grossman and Prof. Hans Boas

Abstract: This is a corpus study examining the borrowing patterns and mechanism of discourse markers in German speech islands, from a comparative point of viewBio: I am a PhD candidate of Structural Linguistics, focusing on Typology of Germanic languages spoken outside of the German sphere

Publications:

Goldblatt, Noa. 2017. What Does Duh Do. MA Thesis. In Der Reggeboge 51:2

 MA Honors Program 203/14

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Moshe Slohovsky

Abstract: My research deals with charlatans, medicine sellers who worked on stages in the market squares and streets, in 17th century Paris. Using texts documenting the performances of the most successful and well known duo of charlatans at the time I seek to position the phenomena in its context in terms of both history of medicine and history of theater. My goal is to understand how and why charlatans fashioned their unique style of performance, and what about it was appealing for their audience and customers.

Bio: I did my B.A. and M.A. in history in the Hebrew University. Co-editor of the journal “Hayo Haya – Young Forum for History”.

Presidential stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Prof. David Enoch and Prof. Hagit Benbaji

Abstract:The main question that underlies the dissertation is the following: do emotions have an epistemic role? The rationale behind the positive answer that I provide is the following. An answer to whether emotions have an epistemic role depends in part on what emotions are. Thus, we need an account of the kind of mental state that emotions are, or at the very least an account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for a mental state being an emotion. In addition, an answer to the question about emotions’  epistemic role must take into consideration that characteristics of emotions may pose limitations on their epistemic role. The five chapters of this dissertation try to do exactly that: provide an account of emotions’ indispensable epistemic role, an account that satisfies the constraints that arise from considering what emotions are. The thesis that arises from the dissertation is that emotions are sui generis mental states, essentially evaluable and felt, that conceptually represent and present affective-evaluative properties. They are the basic way we experience and think about affective-evaluative properties, and they fix the reference of the concepts of these properties. Emotions are defeasibly entitled, can be justified by evaluative evidence and defeasibly justify beliefs in virtue of being evidence of evidence. Although their epistemic role is limited in some cases, they are nonetheless epistemically indispensable.

Bio: 

I have a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from the Hebrew University, an MA in Clinical Psychology and a PhD in Philosophy.  

My dissertation is related to one of the central aspects of our daily lives and of psychotherapy - emotions. Specifically, I argue that emotions are an independent source of knowledge. For example, my fear can be an independent way for me to know that there is something dangerous in my vicinity or my shame can be a way for me coming to know that I had done something wrong. This will seem natural to many people. Psychotherapists surely think that their patients' emotions and their own emotions are a way of discovering a world of psychic meaning. However, is has proven to be quite difficult to offer an account of emotions and their epistemic role that withstands philosophical scrutiny. In my dissertation I hope to have succeed in doing so, while remaining true to the phenomenology of emotions.

Apart from my philosophical research, I am a certified clinical psychologist and conduct therapy with children, adolescents and adults. In addition, I am engaged in theoretical thinking about clinical psychology from a psychoanalytic perspective, mainly Freudian and Kleinian.
 

Publications:

R. Pat-Horenczyk, A.M. Kenan. M. Achitvu, E. Bachar. (2014). Protective Factors Based Model for Screening for Posttraumatic Distress in Adolescents. Child and Youth Care Forum, 43 (3), 339-351. DOI: 10.1007/s10566-013-9241-y.

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Prof. Yigal Bronner

Abstract: My research deals with the unique status of Bhartṛhari, philosopher and grammarian of the 5th century CE, in the writings of a lineage of scholars from Kashmir of the 10-11th centuries (Mainly Somānanda, Utpaladeva, and Abhinavagupta). I examine the ways in which these scholars reinterpreted Bhartṛhari's ideas and terminology in their texts, which, I hope, will shed light on an interesting link in the history of Indian thought and religion.

Azrieli Scholarship 2016/17

Presidential Stipend 2014/15

Supervisor: Prof. Yoav Rinon, Prof. Vivian Liska

Abstract: My study is dedicated to the poetic works of Avot Yeshurun and Paul Celan and to the crucial role questions of space and place, rootedness and uprootedness, displacement and homelessness occupy in it. At the center of the study stands a practice which I call “Poetic Cartography”: poetically re-mapping (and thus re-constituting) actual “real-life” places. This artistic mapping method which is historically and ethically oriented, seeks to alter the ways we think and understand the spaces and places in which we live. 

Bio: I'm interested in 20th century literature and thought, with an emphasis on the convergence between German literature and French theory. My PhD research will be a comparative study of the poetics of Paul Celan and Aavot Yeshurun regarding modernity's "Crisis of Language".

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

Supervisor: Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer and Nigel Goring-Morris

Abstract: The shells of marine molluscs are among the oldest ornaments used by humans. Shells were instrumental in past economic life, as a component in exchange networks, connecting individuals and communities from distant regions. They carry symbolic meaning as artefacts of personal adornment and act as social and personal identity agents. During the Neolithic period in the Levant, shells were used as beads, pendants and inlays, produced by different technological manufacturing procedures, and used in various ways. 

The aims of this project include composing a comprehensive overview and synthesis of shells in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B of the Mediterranean Levant, focusing on the use of shells in different life situations – private, public, mortuary, and intra-site context. An additional aim is to incorporate microscopic methods in the study of manufacturing technology and use-wear, never before carried out in this region.
The materials for this study include both newly excavated shell assemblages and reanalysis of published material. The sources to be used include previous reports on mollusc assemblages; different guides to taxonomic research; published methodological research concerning bead-making technology and macro- and microscopic use-ware analysis; theoretical literature concerning personal adornment, use of space, social and economic interaction, identity and more.

Bio: I have been interested in archaeology since childhood and have participated in excavations from a young age. I have a BA from Ben Gurion University in the Negev and an MA from Tel Aviv University. My MA thesis examined the social and economic place of Qumran Cave 24 (Judean desert), through different aspects of material culture. My main field of expertise is lithics (flint and obsidian) from Neolithic contexts. As part of a wider interest in identities in archaeology I would like to study expressions of personal adornment using molluscan (shell) assemblages.

Publications: 

Gopher, A., Eirikh-Rose, A., Ashkenazi, H., Marco, E., May, H., Makoviychuk, Y., Sapir-Hen, L., Galmor, S., Schechter, H.C., Ackerfeld, D., Haklay, G. and Zutovski, K. 2019. Nahal Yarmuth 38: A new and unique PPNB site in central Israel. Antiquity 93(371): e29 (1-8).

Schechter, H.C., Zutovski, K., Agam, A., Wilson, L. and A. Gopher. 2018. Refitting Bifacial Production Waste – the Case of the Wadi Rabah Refuse Pit from Ein Zippori, Israel. Lithic Technology 43(4): 228-244. DOI: 10.1080/01977261.2018.1514723

Schechter, H.C., Gopher, A., Getzov, N., Rice, E., Yaroshevich, A. and I. Milevski. 2016. The Obsidian Assemblages from the Wadi Rabah Occupations at Ein Zippori, Israel. Paléorient 42(1): 27-48.

Agam, A., Walzer, N., Schechter, H.C., Zutovski, K., Milevski, I., Getzov, N., Gopher, A. and R. Barkai. 2016. Organized waste disposal in the Pottery Neolithic? A Bifacial Workshop Refuse Pit at Ein Zippori, Israel. Journal of Field Archaeology 41(6): 713-730. 

Schechter, H.C., Marder, O. Barkai, R., Getzov, N., and A. Gopher. 2013. The obsidian assemblage from Neolithic Hagoshrim, Israel: pressure technology and cultural influence. In: F. Borrell, J. J. Ibáñez, M. Molist (eds.) Stone Tools in Transition: From Hunter-Gatherers to Farming Societies in the Near East. Bellaterra (Barcelona): Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Pp. 509-528.

Gopher, A., Lemorini, C., Boaretto, E., Carmi, I., Barkai R., and H.C. Schechter. 2013. Qumran Cave 24, a Neolithic-Chalcolithic site by the Dead Sea: a short report and some information on lithics. In: F. Borrell, J. J. Ibáñez, M. Molist (eds.) Stone Tools in Transition: From Hunter-Gatherers to Farming Societies in the Near East. Bellaterra (Barcelona): Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Pp. 101-114. 
 

President Stipend 2016/17