Nina Spiegel
Rabbi Joshua Stampfer Associate Professor of Israel Studies
Contact:
(503) 725-3055
nspiegel@pdx.edu
Office: UCB 465F
Courses Taught:
- JST 333U: Israeli Culture and Society
- JST 335U: Sex, Love, and Gender: Israeli and Palestinian Experiences
- JST/ WS 399: Women and Gender in Judaism
- JST/HST 379U: History of Zionism
- HST 461/561: Topics in Jewish History: History of Jewish Dance
- JST 407: Museums and Memory in Israel and the United States
About
Nina Spiegel is an expert on the development of Israeli culture, including dance, music, and museums, in the early and mid-twentieth century. She is particularly interested in issues emerging at the intersection of performance studies, gender, ethnicity, cultural exchange, and institution building. Her book, Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine, was a finalist for two prestigious book awards; among her colleagues’ favorite chapters is one on the “Queen Esther Competition,” a beauty pageant held in Tel Aviv in the 1920s in which the winner participated in a citywide parade that included decorated floats, a line of motorcycles, and a camel. She is also interested in the influence of Middle Eastern Jewish cultures on Israeli society and her most recent published article explores Yemenite Jewish traditions in Israeli concert dance, discussing the role of Yemenite Jews in Israeli culture more broadly. Prof. Spiegel teaches courses on Israeli culture and society; gender and sexuality; Jewish dance; and museums and memory. Her interest in public history has found expression via a curatorship at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution. Prof. Spiegel is currently working on a book on Israeli culture in the 1950s and 1960s.
Degrees
Ph.D., Stanford University
M.A., Stanford University
B.A., Brown University
Research Interests
Social and cultural history of Israel
Public history and culture in Israel and the United States
Dance history
Arts and performance studies
Gender history
Representative Publications
Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine. (Wayne State University Press, June 2013). Finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature; Finalist for a 2013 National Jewish Book Award.
"Constructing the City of Tel Aviv: Urban Space, Physical Culture, and the Natural and Built Environment," Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice. (Routledge, 2012).
"Sporting a Nation: The Origins of Athleticism in Modern Israel," in Jews in the Gym: Judaism , Sports, and Athletics, edited by Leonard J. Greenspoon. (Purdue University Press, 2012).
"New Israeli Rituals: Inventing a Folk Dance Tradition," Jewish Cultural Studies, vol. 3, edited by Simon J. Bronner. (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011).
"Cultural Production in Tel Aviv: Yardena Cohen and the National Dance Competition of 1937" in Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance, edited by Judith Brin Ingber. (Wayne State University Press, 2011).
"American Jewish Dance," The Cambridge Dictionary of Jewish History, Religion, and Culture, edited by Judith Baskin. (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Representative Public History Experience
Former Curator, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia
Visiting Professional Fellowship, Smithsonian Institution