Chana Kronfeld: The Land as Woman: The Afterlife of a Poetic Metaphor in Women’s Modern Hebrew Poetry (Zoom only)

The Land-as-Woman is one of the most deeply rooted metaphorical systems in Jewish as well as Western and Middle-Eastern cultures, used to support the discourses of colonialism and nationalism throughout history. It has its origins in the Hebrew Bible. In modern Hebrew poetry modernist women poets critique a tradition that views women always as metaphors, never as literal subjects, developing a new erotics of the address to the land that calls into question patriarchal models of conquest and subjugation.

3 sessions: May 18, 25, and June 8 (no class on June 1)