Israel Studies Seminar Series
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
The construction of ethnic identities, a gaze from the margins in literature, photography and urbanity
Panel organizer: Dr. Tal Shamur, Dep. of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
Tuesday, 11th May 2021, 17:15 BST (19:15 Israel time) On Zoom: https://jesuscollegecambridge.zoom.us/j/97603947603
The panel will look at different aspects of ethnic identity construction within the Israeli nation-state through visual representation, biographies as well as urban daily life of people who are not fully integrated into mainstream Israeli society. Panelists will discuss the problematic status of Israeli citizens who are ethnically stigmatized and suffer various forms of discrimination and exclusion. Based on the case study of Mizrahi Jews – Jews who immigrated to Israel from Muslim countries – panelists will offer three perspectives. Batya Shimony will speak about Mizrahi “in-between-ness” in the Tel Aviv East trilogy of Iraqi-born writer, Shimon Ballas, which follows the transition of Mizrahi Jews from transit camps to city neighbourhoods. Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi will discuss her work on depoliticized photography that looks at melancholic and pensive portraits of Mizarhi youth from Musrara, a poor neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Tal Shamur will speak on the intersection of ethnic, gender and spatial marginality as a possible collective emotion of multi-layered melancholy in relation to older Mizrahi women and everyday life in the Hatikva neighborhood of south Tel Aviv.
On the Boundary: The Construction of Mizrahi Identity in Shimon Ballas’s Tel Aviv East Trilogy
Dr. Batya Shimony, Dep. of Hebrew Literature, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Photographs of Musrara Youth and the Ghost of the Black Panthers
Dr. Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi, Dep. of Art History, University of Haifa
An Intersectional analyses of melancholy: Biographies and Lived Experience of Older Mizrahi women in the Hatikva neighborhood of south Tel Aviv.
Dr. Tal Shamur, Dep. of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
Discussant: Dr. Yaron Peleg, Dep. of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge