doctoral dissertation
Poetics Of Protest: Trans-Nationalism In Israeli Anglophone and Hebrew Lyric Poetry
Morani’s dissertation argues that twentieth- and twenty-first century Israeli Anglophone and Hebrew lyric poetry written by women challenges monolithic forms of nationalist discourse, ethnic and religious identity, and the institutionalization of collective memory formation by uncovering the systematic erasure of counter-narratives. The project investigates the writings of Israeli poet-activists Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005), Tikva Levy (1960-2012), Rachel Tzvia Back (b.1960), and Karen Alkalay-Gut (b.1945), who have been marginalized or misread as a result of their gender, ethnicity, or language-choice, as well as their political standing. It demonstrates how these poets write from within in order to resist the sovereign body they innately belong to, in contrast to traditional indigenous reactions, whereby authors “write back” to colonial empires. “Poetics of Protest” is among the first projects to comparatively introduce Israeli Anglophone and Hebrew poetry to the fields of lyric studies and postcolonialism. Just as Israeli poetry is effaced in the canon of postcolonial literature and criticism, so the political dimension of the lyric, and particularly the Israeli lyric, is effaced from the new lyric criticism. Through archival work and translations, the dissertation argues that Israeli Hebrew and Anglophone poets use innovative forms and disjointed formal and temporal structures, while blurring the origin of voice, to disrupt and challenge the way collective memories are perpetuated via commemorative acts. As a result, the lyric poem transforms into a performative space that revisits the birth of the nation – when subject and “other” were simultaneously created. The project calls for a new literary methodology in order to shift from postcolonial theory to anti-colonial praxis. These lyric poems encapsulate the nationalist aspirations of two people who claim one land, giving rise to a new poetic paradigm called “the trans-national lyric” – a form that houses multiple subjects in one, shared poetic space.
academic article PUBLICATIONS (SELECT)
On rights, ruins and returns: Rachel Tzvia Back’s Israeli anglophone lyric palimpsest
Written at the height of the Second Intifada, Israeli anglophone poet Rachel Tzvia Back’s On Ruins & Return uncovers the politics of Palestinian indigeneity and the material realities of occupation. Back evokes the near-extinct buffalo and crafts a “lyric palimpsest” to draw a line between settler colonialism in North America and Israel–Palestine. This article offers an overview of the understudied field of Israeli anglophone literature and its affinity to postcolonial and global anglophone discourses through an examination of Back’s transnational mobility, the role of English as a colonial-turned-global language in Israel–Palestine, the architectural legacy of British colonialism in Jerusalem, and anti-colonial resistance. The article analyses Back’s postcolonial lyric palimpsest in terms of its form, theme, authorial voice and audience, and argues that English-language writing challenges Israeli nationalism, while simultaneously underscoring the ongoing repercussions of colonialism.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Lyric, Nation, and Dialogism: Uncovering the Lost Voice of Maxim Ghilan
This article introduces, for the first time, the marginalized writings of Israeli-statehood-generation poet Maxim Ghilan (1931–2005), who lived in self-exile in Paris as a result of his political activism. By investigating the relationship between lyric poetry and nationalism, the article introduces Ghilan’s early poetry, followed by a close analysis of his groundbreaking and understudied poem “In Enemy Land,” written upon his return to Israel. Ghilan’s poetry overturns nationalist discourse by revisiting the events of 1948 and evoking the dual notion of return, namely, the Israeli Law of Return and the Palestinian Right of Return. In an effort to contribute to New Lyric Studies, the article offers a new form of lyric reading, the “trans-national lyric,” a hyphenated form of transnationalism used to emphasize crossing over and moving beyond the nation. The trans-national lyric dismantles the lyric speaker’s sovereign position and consequently uncovers the silent — and silenced — dialogic voices that are an inseparable part of the genre. The article concludes with an analysis of lyric address and the ethical role of reading, whereby readers are implicated in the process of forced remembering and historical revision.
Political Awakening and National Revolt in Nawal El Saadawi's God Dies by the Nile
This essay positions Egyptian physician, novelist, and activist Nawal El Saadawi’s understudied novel God Dies by the Nile within a broader framework of Egyptian revolutionary movements. It analyzes representations of the peasantry – which, historically, symbolize Egyptian nationalism – and argues that British and American (neo)colonial intervention in Egyptian policies has legitimized patriarchal violence while disrupting the subaltern family unit through the misuse of religious rites; as a result, women, especially, become victims of sexual exploitation and forced labor. By focusing on the heroine’s political awakening through her participation in a Zarritual, a folklore exorcist practice, the paper highlights the importance of the ritual’s failureas subverting the matrimony between Islam, patriarchy, and capitalism. The novel thus overturns preexisting beliefs concerning peasant oppression and foregrounds the significance of non-linguistic modes of political awakening, class-consciousness, concerted collective action, and, ultimately, national revolt.
Research in African Literatures
Israeli poet-activist Dahlia Ravikovitch’s “Hovering at a Low Altitude” presents a disembodied speaker who witnesses the rape-murder of an Arab shepherd girl. Though traditionally read as a metaphor for Israeli disassociation concerning Palestinian dispossession, this essay argues that the poem reflects the collective forgetting of wartime rape-murder crimes committed by Jewish soldiers against Palestinian women during the 1948 war. The essay draws on Ravikovitch’s early poems, which centralize biblical and medieval tales of rape, as well as testimonies by Israeli veterans, to overturn the way war rape crimes have been committed, witnessed, and narratedby men. By conveying the events from a female point of view, the poem – despite its potential complicity – offers a decolonial framing of the events of 1948 and creates the possibility for transnational feminist solidarity, whereby speaker, and subsequently reader, challenge collective amnesia. “Hovering at a Low Altitude” ultimately opens new avenues for historical restoration and collective responsibility.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures
Culture & Imperialism: Women Writers in Contested Borders
University at Buffalo, SUNY
World Literature
Literature and Law
Introduction to Creative Writing, Guest Lecturer
Israeli and Palestinian Culture, Guest Lecturer
Rereading Cultural Myths
Cultural Imagination: Shaping Spaces
Media and Image
Justice and Social (In)Equality, Educational Opportunity Program (EOP)
Tel Aviv University, Israel
Introduction to Poetry
American Literature and Culture, Tutorial Instructor
CONFERENCE Papers Presented
“Black Panthers in Israel-Palestine: From African American Activism to the Mizrahi Feminist Movement,” “International Solidarity and World Literature” Seminar, American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Los Angeles, CA.
“Resistance from Within: The Nakba in Hebrew and Israeli Anglophone Poetry,” “Nakba at 70: Culture & Politics,” Transdisciplinary Connections Postcolonial Studies, Modern Language Association (MLA), New York City, NY.
“From Israel/Palestine to South Africa: Poetics of Testimony and Violence in the Global Anglophone Lyric,” Modern Language Association (MLA), Philadelphia, PA.
“’On Ruins and Return:’ Anglophone Lyric Poetry in Israel/Palestine,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA), Pasadena, CA.
“Traveling Transnational Feminisms and the Politics of Conflict,” University of California Los Angeles Friends of English Southland Conference, Los Angeles, CA.
“Geopolitical Identities within a Contested Landscape: The Role of the Arab-Jew in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA), Riverside, CA.
“The Politics of Expression in Israeli and Palestinian Protest Poetry: Feminine Subjectivities and the Contested Border(s) of Partition,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Toronto, Canada.
“’I Know You Are But What Am I?’ Graduate Mentoring and the Teaching Practicum Playground.” SUNY Council of Writing, Buffalo, NY.
“Destabilizing the Boundaries of Conflict: Lyric Protest and the Arab Jew as the Intermediary Levantine,” Modern Language Association (MLA), Boston, MA.
“Present Absentees and the Conflict of the Future in Hebrew Protest Poetry,” Hebrew Literature and the Nakba Conference Day, Beit Ha’am, Tel Aviv, Israel.
“Reframing God Dies By the Nile: Feminist Writing, Social Consciousness and the Egyptian Revolution,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Rochester, NY.
“A Poetics within Conflict: Nostalgic Futurism & Hebrew Protest Poetry,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA), Georgia State University, GA.
“Writing the Body: The Emerging ‘Voice’ in Sylvia Plath's Ekphrastic Poetry,” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Newark, NJ.
“Discovering the Beat in Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues:” Jack Kerouac, Kerouac’s On the Road, and the Beats, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Panels Organized
“Lyric, Violence, and the Global Anglophone Turn,” Modern Language Association (MLA),Philadelphia, PA.
“Challenging Israeli and Palestinian Relations: The Protest of Poetry within a Region of Conflict,” Modern Language Association (MLA), Boston, MA.
“Graduate Student Mentoring: Negotiating the Disciplinary Terrain without the Experience of the Discipline.” SUNY Council of Writing, Buffalo, NY.
Conferences Organized
“Building Cultures of Writing for Tomorrow,” SUNY Council on Writing, 23rd Annual Conference, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY.
“UB Poetics @ 20,” Graduate Student Colloquium and Poetry Reading, Poetry Collection, Buffalo, NY.
Invited Talks and Campus Presentations
“On Teaching Literature and Law,” Riverrun Foundation Fellows Event, Talking Leaves Books, Buffalo, NY.
“Introduction to The Other Son.” Global CINEMAspectives Film & Discussion Series, International Student & Scholar Services, SUNY Buffalo, NY.
“Rechem, The Masculine Uterus: Between Gendered Languages” Gender Across Borders Symposium, Gender Institute, SUNY Buffalo, NY.
Discussion of Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love & Darkness. Just Buffalo’s Babel at Betty’s Series, Buffalo, NY.