On Revival

Gil Z. Hochberg is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies at Columbia University and Chair of the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS). Her research focuses on the intersections among psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, nationalism, gender and sexuality. She is the author of three books, co-editor of two and has published numerous essays on the politics of art in the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Her latest book, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future (Duke University Press, 2021), is winner of the 2022 René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association.

Roni Henig is an Assistant Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at New York University. She researches modern Hebrew literature and Jewish literatures in a comparative context. Her work focuses on critical literary theory, language politics, multilingualism, dysfluency studies, and the critique of nationalism across Jewish literatures and beyond. Her book, On Revival: Hebrew Literature Between Life and Death (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), is a critique of the discourse of language revival in modern Hebrew literature. The book explores the notion of Hebrew revival in early twentieth-century Hebrew literary discourse and its role in the formation of Jewish nationalism, Zionism, and modern Hebrew culture. Prior to joining NYU, Henig was a Research Fellow at Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination at Reid Hall, Paris. Her work has been awarded the 2021 Baron Dissertation Prize by Columbia University and the 2017 A. Owen Aldridge Prize by the American Comparative Literature Association.