Phd Alumni

Subject: The Formation of the Way of the Cross in Late-Medieval Jerusalem

Supervisors: Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum, Prof. Iris Shagrir and Prof. Reuven Amitai 

Abstract: The Way of the Cross has been one of Jerusalem’s most prominent axes for Christian worship in the past 700 years or so, at least from the Latin-Christian perspective. Although its production process finds its roots in the Crusader period, the Way of the Cross flourished and became a stable part of the pilgrimage circuit while Jerusalem was under Muslim rule, and while the Christians were limited by changing restriction of movement, worship and ownership. My dissertation deals with the formation of the Way of the Cross in Late Medieval Jerusalem.

Bio: Netta Amir is a PhD student at the History Department and a receiver of a Mandel Scholion scholarship as well as a  Rotenstreich scholarship. Her dissertation deals with the formation of the Way of the Cross in Late-Medieval Jerusalem, and it is being written under the supervision of Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum and Prof. Iris Shagrir.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2018/19

Supervisor: Prof. Elhanan Yakira, Dr. Tatiana Karachentseva

Abstract: The work analyses the notion of rationality presented in Hermann Cohen's "System der Philosophie" (1902-1912). In contrast to the customary view, I show that his rationalism is grounded in an intensional theory of conceptuality, taken in the Leibnizian sense. Such a theory comprehends the concept as an expression of the intelligibility of an individual being, an expression of its being a rational possibility, rather than a general-formal relation. The work demonstrates that a reading of Cohen's "logic of origin"  on the base of the principles of a Leibnizian intensional theory of concepts clarifies the internal logic of Cohen's arguments and provides means for evaluating the problematics of rationality placed at the core of the system. I show that Cohen's system attempts to present an intensional rationalism without the (dogmatic) presupposition of the compete rationality of the actual. In that, it represents a unique and philosophically valuable notion of rationality.  

I am interested in rationalism (both as a philosophical tradition and as a philosophical stance), Kant, German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism. My research so far has dealt with Cohen's system, with the notion of rationality it embodies, and with the manner in which this notion influences Cohen's ethical, cultural, theological, and political views.   

Publications:

Amir, Roy. Messianism and the Possibility of knowledge in Cohen and Benjamin, Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica (2017:1), pp. 61-78. 

Rotenstreich Scholarship 2015/2016

Presidential Stipend 2013/2014

Research subject: Isaiah 24-27 and its Reception in Second Temple literature 

Supervisor: Prof. Michael Segal, Dr. Ronnie Goldstein

Abstract: The study seeks to trace the textual expressions of the unit of prophecies called "The Apocalypse of Isaiah", chapters 24-27, and its development in Second Temple literature.

Bio: Avigail Aravna is a graduate of the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and will be a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the President's Fellowship and a colleague at the Mandel School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Her research deals with biblical and external apocalyptic literature during the Second Temple period.

Publications: 

“Sending Subtle Threads of Influence into the Past: A Reexamination of the Relationship between Isaiah 24:6 and Jeremiah 23:10” in:The History of Isaiah: The Making of the Book and its Presentation of the Past (FAT). Edited by T. Hibbard and J. Stromberg. Mohr Siebeck. (forthcoming 2021)
 

Presidential Stipend 2017/18

Supervisor: Prof. Ilana Pardes

Abstract: In my doctoral research, provisionally titled "Ludic Quests: Gogol, Melville, Nabokov," I offer a comparative reading of three novels: "Dead Souls," "Moby-Dick," and "Lolita." The focal point of my analysis is the examination of correspondences between the geographic and the poetic-cum-interpretive quests performed in each work. I argue that both types of quests—the literal and the figurative—are characterized by distinct playfulness, a particularly significant manifestation of which is the personages' and speakers' continual digression to the margins of the road and of discourse alike. In addition to explicating philosophical and formal affinities between the three novels with regard to the benefits and the hazards of ludically going off track, my study seeks to trace the Russian-American dialogue in which Nabokov engages with two of his nineteenth-century predecessors.

Publications:

* "על העיוורון: ספר איוב כמודל להארה רוחנית בסונטה התשע-עשרה של
מילטון", מוזה: כתב עת לתלמידי מחקר במדעי הרוח, גיליון 1 (2017): 7-22.

Rotenstreich Stipend 2017/18

Presidential Stipend 2015/16

Supervisor: Prof. Menahem Kahana

Abstract: The Tannaitic midrash Sifre Zuta beMidbar did not survive in its entirety, and some of it was revealed through lone genizah fragments and many quotations in mediaeval rabbinic literature. Like of the halakhic midrash from the school of R. Akiba, this midrash too employs mishnaic material which stood before it in various ways.As it has already been shown, its mishna was not the known mishna of R. Judah the Patriarch, but rather another mishnaic corpus that can teach us the sources and redactional methods of our mishna. My philological-exegetical research aims to characterise this corpus and its ties to our mishna, as well as the ways in which the midrash employs it.

Presidential Stipend 2012/13

Supervisor: Dr. Tamar Hess

Abstract: In the dissertation I wish to examine the late poetry of Tuvia Rivner, Israel Pincas, S. Shifra, and Avot Yeshurun in light of the perspective of "late style" and old age.
"Late style" as an independent field of research that offers a multi-directional model for the examination of late works has yet to be assimilated in the research of modern Hebrew poetry. This, despite fascinating and varied developments in this field of research around the world. Studies of the artist as an old man and artistic works towards the end of life have been conducted in recent decades in various fields of art, such as music, painting, and literature, juxtaposing aesthetic research tools and psychoanalytical theories concerning the cycle of life and theories from the field of gerontology, which at the same period of time established itself as an independent scientific field of research.
In the proposed research I wish to open a more significant window upon these developments and, as I mentioned above, use the perspectives of old age and "late style" to examine the late works of the four poets. The working assumption is that this perspective can serve as a valuable interpretive tool for understanding the poetical changes in the late work of these poets and vice versa: A thorough examination of the late works of these poets and the uncovering of the inner dialectical processes that motivate stylistic changes in their work can contribute to the developing theoretical discussion in this field.

Bio: I studied for my BA and MA at Hebrew University, in the Hebrew Literature department, and also completed MA studies on the creative writing track in the Hebrew Literature department of Ben Gurion University in the Negev. In the last years I devoted myself mostly to educating and teaching in the Hebrew University Secondary School (Leyada), and in various academic institutions - in The Hebrew University, David Yellin Teacher’s College, the Academy for Music and Dance, and others. I wrote my M.A. final thesis about Tuvia Rivner's poetry, with a view to examining the existential-linguistic contradiction that is at its core. In the dissertation I deal with the poetic features of late poetry, under the guidance of Dr. Tamar Hess.

Presidential Stipend 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: Dr. Aldina Quintana and Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem

Abstract: Mapping of syntactical and morphological structures marking foreground and background in Judeo-Spanish folktales documented between 1914-1935 in the Balkan region.

Rothschild Stipend 2014/15

Subject: The Rise of Political Responsibility in British Parliamentary Culture, 1780-1790

Supervisor: Prof. Dror Wahrman 

 Abstract: In my research I trace the emerging of a political culture of responsibility, accountability, and professionalism in 1780s Britain. Examining the ruling elite's reaction to the aftermath of the American Revolution, I wish to explore how a new political ethos helped shape the British modern state and its political sphere.

Bio: I completed my BA and MA in the department of History in The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My main filed of study is British visual cultural and economic and political history in the long eighteenth century. My research deals with the gradual development of the modern British democratic tradition and the changing roles of the politician in that process. 

Mosse Stipend 2018/19