Call for Papers – Politics of Diasporic Hebrew Language Education
Most contemporary Hebrew language education is either Old Testament-centered or Israel-centered. Yet diasporic learning has been the normative condition of the Hebrew language.
This edited volume, tentatively titled Politics of Diasporic Hebrew Language Education, focuses on the history and politics of learning Hebrew in global diasporic communities. Rather than a systematic mapping, the volume aims to provide readers with a topical introduction that covers historical background and a variety of social issues that frame Hebrew language pedagogies. It argues that diasporic Hebrew, in all its variant styles, constitutes a political argument for Jewish cultural cohesion. These politics produce different learning cultures and pedagogies.
The poet Almog Behar writes: “you don’t / look to me like you spoke Yiddish in your parents’ home yourself, maybe you / learned it somewhere outside, maybe your own grandfather had an accent like / mine and listen, I’m calling friends, my friends, listen to what a beautiful accent they have, / Hebrew as Hebrew should be spoken, without any accent, and if these are / my friends, then who am I.” (‘Ana min al yahoud – I’m one of the Jews’) This essay collection will be organized around an understanding that there is no single, monopolistic, state-sponsored version of the Hebrew language and identity. Diversity of accents and usages constitute a central feature of diasporic Hebrew and its pedagogies.
The topics of essays that we are soliciting cover a broadly integrated historical, political and pedagogical range related to the Hebrew language. Potential topics include such as:
- historical or contemporary diaspora-Israel relations embodied in Hebrew language pedagogy;
- synergies and tensions between secular and religious language use in pedagogical decision-making;
- Hebrew inadequacy or insufficiency as normative diasporic linguistic conditions;
- teaching gender and sexual equality in contemporary Hebrew, gender neutrality, and avoidance of male-dominant language;
- community Hebrew literacy projects and communal linguistic self-education;
- use of diasporic Hebrew writers and texts in Hebrew language education;
- Mizrachi, Yemenite and South Asian traditions of Hebrew learning;
- Hebrew-language visual culture, esp. film, its diasporic reception, and educational use;
- history of Hebrew language education under oppressive governments, including school closures and informal classes;
- history of Hebrew language learning in secret;
- violence against Jewish education and Hebrew teachers;
- Hebrew and its purposes in European and US higher education, from the Renaissance to present day;
- contemporary Christian Hebrew language studies and their ideologies;
- online commercialization of Hebrew studies;
- social media and Hebrew learning;
- politics of Hebrew language studies in Palestinian territories and universities in the Arab world;
- anti-Hebrew language rejection, antagonism towards Hebrew studies, and their history;
- emergent critical and democratic Hebrew pedagogies.
We will be looking for chapter contributions with social, political, or historical dimensions, whatever the specific aspect of Hebrew language education. Programmatic descriptions alone are insufficient. While contributions relying on substantive quantitative data will be welcome, they will need to be well contextualized with qualitative analysis. Bibliographic citations in Hebrew should remain in that language.
Chapter abstracts of 200-250 words and a CV are due by December 31, 2023. Selected draft chapters of 5000-7000 words, including Works Cited, will be needed by September 1, 2024. This edited collection is of interest to Multilingual Matters publishers. Send abstracts (Word attachments only) or further inquiries to Prof. Joe Lockard, Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA. Email: Joe.Lockard@asu.edu.