Home Page 

Adia Mendelson-Maoz, Professor

Hebrew
Prof. Adia Mendelson-Maoz
Contact Info

The Open University of Israel Department of Literature, Language and Arts 1 University Road, P. O. Box 808, Raanana 43107, Israel
Office:972-9-7781105/990 Email:adiamen@openu.ac.il

Additional Information

My CRIS profile

Areas of Interest
  • Modern and Contemporary Hebrew Literature
  • Literature and the Israeli Culture
  • Literature and Ethics
  • Multiculturalism in Israel
  • Digital Humanities

Adia Mendelson-Maoz is a professor in Israeli literature and culture at the Open University of Israel. She investigates the multifaceted relationships between literature, ethics, politics, and culture, mainly in the context of Hebrew Literature and Israeli culture.

Open all
2002
Tel Aviv University, The Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies
PhD, Hebrew Literature
Research title: “Representation of Moral Problems in Literature, Selected 20th Century Hebrew Prose: Theory and Application”.
Supervisors: Professor Reuven Tsur, Professor Asa Kasher.
1996
Tel Aviv University, Department of Hebrew Literature
M.A, Hebrew Literature, Cum Laude
Thesis title: "Postmodernist Literature as Literature of Extreme Situations: as studied through the works of Orly Castel-Bloom and Etgar Kerrett”.
Supervisor: Professor Reuven Tsur.
1994
Haifa University, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature
B.A, Comparative Literature, Cum Laude

2022-2024 - Chair DHSS Hub - Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Hub

2021-2024 -  Chair, MA program in Cultural Studies

2020-2024 - Chair, Literature, Language and the Arts Senate Subcommittee

2020  - Institution supervisor on practicum courses 

2016-2020 – Chair, Department of Literature, Language and Arts
The Open University of Israel

2015-2016 - Visiting Scholar
Department of Near Eastern languages and civilizations, Harvard University

Since 2015 - Associate Professor
The Open University of Israel
Senior Faculty Member in Literature and Culture
Head of Hebrew Literature Section
Member of the steering committee for the MA program in Cultural Studies

2012-2015 - Senior Lecturer
The Open University of Israel

2009-2012 - Lecturer
The Open University of Israel

2008-2009 - Visiting Lecturer
The Open University of Israel, Department of Literature, Language and Arts

2006-2008 - Tutor and Course Coordinator, The Open University of Israel

2004-2007 - Lecturer
Kibbutzim College of Education, Department of Literature

2004-2005 - Adjunct Lecturer
Haifa University, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature

2002-2004 - Postdoctoral research fellow, with The Rothschild Fellowship 2002-2003, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Comparative Literature

2021 -   Co-editor (with Oded Haklai) of ISR – Israel Studies Review

2018-2020 Leadership in Academia: Developing Senior Leadership in Higher Education Institutes by The Israeli Council for Higher Education 

2020 Member of the committee, Goldberg Award for best academic manuscripts, The Open University Academic Press.

2019 Member of the committee, Ben Halpern Award for best dissertation in Israel Studies, AIS.

2016  Member of the committee for Sapir Prize annual literary award, Mifal HaPayis

2015  Member of the committee for Shulamit Aloni scholarship. 

2012  Member of the committee for Bialik Prize, annual literary award, Tel Aviv municipality.

2006  Committee member for undergraduate program plan in Culture studies, Sapir Academic College.

2010 Member of the Young Scholars Forum of the Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities.

1999 Research Associate, Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.

Bahat Award, Haifa University, Yoram Kaniuk: Other Than Biography, 2024

2020-2023 - Ministry of Science, Digital Humanities (with Avi Shmidman, Bar Ilan University), "Computational Stylistic Profiles for the Analysis of Modern Hebrew Prose." (320,000IS)

2015-2019 - ISF – Israeli Israel Science Foundation, Yoram Kaniuk: Life and Work (300,000IS)

2002-2003 - Post-Doc Fellowship. The Rothschild Foundation

2007 - Teaching Award, Technion – Israel institute of Technology

2002-2003 - Post-Doc Fellowship. The Rothschild Foundation

2010, 2011, 2013, 2018, 2020 - Research Grants, The Open University Research Authority

2008, 2014, 2019 - Grants in Support of a Book Publication, The Open University Research Authority

2003 - Dorot Grant, National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH)

2000 - Award.  Dov Sadan Fund for Research in Hebrew and Yiddish Literature and Language    

1999 - Research Associate. Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics Tel Aviv University 

1999 - Dorot Grant, National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH)

1998 - 2002 - Living Allowance. Moshe Yerablom Fund, Department of Hebrew Literature,  Tel Aviv University

1996 - MA Distinction Grant. Department of Hebrew Literature, Tel Aviv University

1993 - Rector’s Award and Grant. Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature,  Haifa University

Supervised Post-Doc

2014-2015 - Dr. Tamar Marin, Post-Doc fellowship, The Open University of Israel

2009-2010 - Dr. Shimrit Peled, with Vatat fellowship, The Open University of Israel

PhD Supervision

2023-2024 - Dr. Yifatch Ashkenazi, Post-Doc fellowship, The Open University of Israel

2020-2021 -Miriam Rabi (with Yaniv Hagbi). University of Amsterdam
Project title: "An Unfinished Passing – Danzy Senna's Caucasia and Philip Roth's The Human Stain as paradigms for literary manifestations of Black and Jewish (interchangeable) Identities." [The student passed away in 2021]

2019 - Valerica van der Geld-Dodan (with Yaniv Hagbi). University of Amsterdam
Project title: "Between memory and imagination: Homecoming in Aharon Appelfeld’s and Eva Hoffman’s autobiographies and fiction."

MA Supervision

2022 - Snunit Liss, MA program in Cultural Studies

2020 - Tami Yoav, MA program in Cultural Studies

2014-2018 - Israel Livney, MA program in Cultural Studies

2013-2016 - Tammy Frade Galon, MA program in Cultural Studies

2013-2018 - Noa Benglass-Yavin, MA program in Cultural Studies (with Asa Kasher)

Give Peace a Chance - Emil Habibi and Yoram Kaniuk. (With Huda Abu Much). AIS-EAIS conference, July 2025. Prague. Speaker and session organizer.

Saga of expulsion - The Egyptian Novel by Orly Castel Bloom. Orly Castel Bloom's conference. May 2025, University of Cambridge, UK.

A computational analysis of gender in 20th century Israeli prose. (With Avi Shmidman). The value of the Digital,#DHJewish Conference and Hackathon, April 2024, Potsdam, Germany

A phone Call from 1947: On Yoram Kaniuk and the Palestinians. MLA conference, January 2024, Philadelphia

Digital Tools and an alternative gaze on the historiography of Modern Hebrew Literature (With Avi Shmidman). NAPH conference, June 2023, Tel-Aviv. Speaker and session organizer.

Reading Gender in Israeli Fiction: A Computatoinal Analysis. (With Avi Shmidman). AJS Annual Cofernce, December 2022, Boston. Speaker and session organizer.

Writing in a Time of an Epidemic (With Dana Freibach-Heifetz). ICLA, Tbilisi, Georgia, July 2022.

Amos Oz's "In the Land of Israel":Forty Years Later. AIS conference, Bar Ilan University, June 2022.

The Third Eye - Israeli Authors Write a Palestinian Story. ACLA, June 2022 (Online)

Kaniuk and Germany - Two unpublished works. Cultural Encounters between Israel and Germany. Basel, May-June, 2022.

1982/3 - Amos Gitai's Field Diary versus Amos Oz's IN the land of Israel. Amos Gitai Conference. Stanford University, May 2022. 

Kaniuk's Canine Writing , AJS Annual Conference, December 2021, Chicago.

Migrant Workers in Contemporary Israeli Literature – Questioning Empathy and Ethics. AIS conference, June 2021 (Online) . Speaker and session organizer.

Yoram Kaniuk and Suzan Sontag. [Hebrew] NAPH conference, June 2021 (Online)

Dogs and other Animals is Kaniuk's work – A computational study (with  Nitzan Gado Sinai Rusinek). [Hebrew] Distant reading and computational research in Hebrew Literature. Ben Gurion University, April 2021.

Between the First and the Second Intifada – Poetic Variations in Castel-Bloom's Works, ACLA conference, April 2021 (Online).

The Ethics of Reading: Israeli Literature and the Palestinian Other, University of Boston, Amherst, March 2021. Invited guest lecture (Online).

Jerusalem Time – Temporal Variations in Contemporary Israeli Dystopias. AJS 52th Annual Conference, December 2020 (Online). Speaker and session organizer

Space, Memory and Form in Matalon and Oz's Autobiographical writing. AJS 51th Annual Conference, San Diego, December 2019.

Negotiating Identities in the Migration Era – Transnationalism and Group Identity among Israeli Immigrants from Former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia. The International Conference on "Migrating World: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Migration and Integration." London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Greenwich, London, March 2019.

The Winding Path of Memory – Yoram Kaniuk's Writing on 1948 war. AJS 50th Annual Conference, Boston, December 2018.

The Missing Author – Working on Manuscript Left by a Dead Author. Author as Editor and Editor as Author – 15th annual conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS 2018). Charles University, Prague, November 2018.

Sabon – The Unpublished novel of Yoram Kaniuk. [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, University of Amsterdam, June 2018

War, Trauma and Memory in the works of Yoram Kaniuk. [Hebrew] 1948 in Israeli Literature and Cinema. The Open University of Israel, June 2018. Speaker and conference organizer.

Territory and Sovereignty, "Sucot" and "Shmita" in Michal Govrin's Havzekim. [Hebrew] Religious/secularity and Gender in Israeli Litearture, Ben-Gurion University, May 2018. 

Shooting and Crying - Israeli Soldiers' Documentary and Fictional Testimonies. 2018 Annual Meeting of ACLA, UCLA March 2018.

The Face of the Palestinian Child in Israeli Literature from 1948 War to the Intifadas Era. AJS 49th Annual Conference, Washington D.C., December 2017. Speaker and session organizer.

Female Navigation in the Domestic Sphere - Asfu Beru’s Fiction between Ethiopia and Israel. EAIS 6th Annual Conference, The University of Wroclaw, Poland September 2017. Speaker and session organizer.

On Analogy, Empathy, and the Risk of False Pretention. Case Study: Israeli Literary Representations of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 21st-Century Theories of Literature: Ethics, Tropes, Attunement. University of Warwick, April 2017.

Dina Zvi Riklis, Ronit Matalon and the Female Autobiography. Women in Israeli Cinema, The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 5-7 March 2017.

Teaching the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict through Women's Literature. AJS Seminar on Teaching the Arab Israeli Conflict in Culture. AJS 48th Annual Conference, San Diego, December 2016.

The Challenges of Ronit Matalon. AJS 48th Annual Conference, San Diego, December 2016. Respondent and session organizer.

The Deterritorialization of the Zionist Time and Space in Kaniuk's Works. [Hebrew]. The NAPH conference, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, June 2016. Speaker and session organizer.

Diaspora and Homeland – Israel and Africa in the Israeli literature of Beta Israel. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Center for Jewish Studies, and the department of comparative literature, Harvard University, April 2016. Invited guest lecture.

The Lost Home in the Writing of Authors from Former Soviet Union in Israel. AJS 47th Annual Conference, Boston, December 2015.

Kerrets's "Living-Dead" and the Sacrifice of Israeli Masculinity. Keret's Happy Campers-Etgar Keret and the Fate of Israeli Culture in the World Today, Chicago University, October, 2015

Traces of the Past – The Sounds of War and Bach's Fugue. [Hebrew] Conference on Kaniuk's work, the Open university, May 2015. Speaker and conference organizer.

The Nomadic World of Alex Epstein. The AIS conference, Montreal, Canada, June 2015. Speaker and session organizer.

The Fallacy of Analogy, the Fallacy of Empathy. Ethics and Literature – First International Conference. University of Porto, Portugal, May 2015

The Face of the Dead Other - A Levinasian Reading of Contemporary Israeli Novels by A.B. Yehoshua and Shifra Horn. [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Be'er Sheva, Israel, June 2014. Speaker and session organizer.

Shimon Adaf and the Peripheral Novel. The AIS conference, Sde Boker, Israel, June 2014.

Space, Territory, and Borders: Liminality in Contemporary Israeli Literature. Conference "Between Places and Spaces", Trinity College, Dublin, June 2014.

Diaspora and Homeland—Israel and Africa in the Hebrew-Israeli Literature of Beta Israel. The AJS conference, Boston, December 2013.

The No-home of Matalon and Berdugo. [Hebrew] Conference on "Home" Haifa University, May 2013.

The road to "Yerussalem" – Astrai and the Israeli literature of Beta Israel. The AIS conference, Haifa University, June 2012.

Borders, territory and Sovereignty in Ronit Matalon's Sara Sara and Michal Govrin's Havzekim [Hebrew] Haifa University, Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Faculty seminar, February 2011. Guest speaker.

The Bereaved father and his Dead son in the Works of A.B Yehoshua. The NAPH conference, New-York July 2010.

Violence, Morality and Tragedy – The Israeli Soldier in the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada. 9st Global Conference: Violence, Saltsburg, Austria, March 2010.

Narratives of immigration in 20th century Hebrew Literature [Hebrew] Cultures in Israel, The Open University of Israel, December 2009.

Said Kashua as a Hebrew Writer (with Liat Steir-Livny) [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, London, UK, July 2009

Darwish and Kashua on Identity. The 25th AIS conference, Be'er Sheva, June 2009.

Ha'akeda in Yehoshua's work [Hebrew] The Israel Inter-University Conference for Hebrew Literature Research, Bar Ilan University, Israel, June 2009. 

The Identity Card of Darwish and Kashua. ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) conference, Seminar on: The Territories of the Citizen: Literature and Political Belonging, Harvard University, MA, March 2009.

Literature as a Moral Laboratory. Literature and Philosophy/Philosophy and Literature, Sussex UK, June 2008.

Aliya versus Immigration in Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness: A Reflection of Immigration Narratives in Contemporary Israeli Literature. The 24th AIS conference, NYU, New York, May 2008.

Being an Immigrant in One’s Homeland - Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness [Hebrew] 1948-2008: Sixty Years of Hebrew Literature, Haifa University, Israel, March 2008.

Being an Immigrant in One’s Homeland- The reflection of narratives of immigration in contemporary Israeli literature. 1st Global Conference: Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging, Oxford UK, September 2007.

A Terrible Power of a Minor Guilt – From Theory to Realization [Hebrew] Conference: "70 Faces of A.B. Yehoshua", Tel-Aviv University, March 2007.

Literature: Ethics and Morality (series) [Hebrew] Academic supervision (with Asa Kasher) and speaker, Jerusalem center of ethics, Mishkenot Sh'ananim, 2007.

Yehoshua’s Moral Context [Hebrew] The 21st Israel Inter-University Conference for Hebrew Literature Research, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, May 2006.

New Vocabulary of Attention: Representation of Moral Problems in Literature – An Aesthetics Perspective. "The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English", University of Zaragoza, Jaca, Spain, March 2005.

"A Land that Devours its Inhabitants": Pagis' "Practice in Everyday Hebrew" and Grossman’s “The Sticker Song." [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Stanford, California, June 2005.

Kerret’s Black Humor. [Hebrew] The 20th Israel Inter-University Conference for Hebrew Literature Research, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, April 2005

Intifada Stories. [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Austin, Texas, May 2004.

How Are Young Boys Turned into Killers?   Revealing the Dynamics of War Crimes in Hebrew Literature – The Case of 1949 Yizhar's "Hirbet Hiz'a." The 15th Annual Conference, “Literature, film and war”, Binghamton University (SUNY), March 2004.

Ella Bat-Tsion: From the Woman She Loved to the Love of God. [Hebrew] AJS 35th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, Massachusetts, December 2003.

The Question of Polygamy in Yehoshua’s A Journey to the End of the Millennium (1997) – Two Moral Views – Two Jewish Cultures. Colloquium for Jewish studies, University of California, Davis, June 2003. Invited guest lecture.

On Passion and Regulation: A.B. Yehoshua’s, A Journey to the End of the Millennium (1997). [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Tampa, Florida, May 2003.

Kerret's "'The Ants' Family Sad Story" [Hebrew] Junior Scholars Colloquium On Interpretation: Modern Hebrew Literature, Brandeis University, Boston, October 2002.

Living Right and Living Well, Kaniuk’s The Last Jew (1981) and Grossman's See Under ‘Love’ (1986). [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Be'er Sheva, Israel, July 2002.

’Please Forward the Story’: Folk Narratives from the Marketplace to the Virtual World (with Limor Weissman) [Hebrew] The 21st Israel Inter-University Conference for Jewish Folklore Research, Tel Aviv University, Israel, April 2002.

Moshe Shamir's With his Own Hands and Aristotle’s Ethics. [Hebrew] The NAPH conference, Mexico City, Mexico, June 1999.

Dissonances' Contribution to Moral Problem’s Representation in Kaniuk’s Himmo King of Jerusalem [Hebrew] The 14th Israel Inter-University Conference for Hebrew Literature Research, Haifa University, Israel, March 1999.

Castel-Bloom’s Dolly City and the Critics – Interpretations and Criticism in Research of Contemporary Hebrew Literature. [Hebrew] The 13th Israel Inter-University Conference for Hebrew Literature Research, Bar Ilan University, Israel, March 1998.

Open all

Mendelson-Maoz Adia. Yoram Kaniuk: Other Than Biography. Haifa University Press and Pardes Pres, forthcoming 2025 (winner of Bahat Award)

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Territories and Borders in the Shadow of the Intifada: Ethical reading of Hebrew Literature 1987-2007. Magnes Press [Hebrew], 2021 (365 pp) (translation and Hebrew adaptation of Borders, Territories and Ethics with a new additional chapter)
https://www.magnespress.co.il/book/%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%97%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%95%D7%92%D7%91%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%9C_%D7%94%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%90%D7%93%D7%94-7169

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Borders, Territories and Ethics – Hebrew Literature in Shadow of the Intifada 

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Multiculturalism in Israel - Literary Perspectives 
Purdue University Press, 2014 (360 pp.)
http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/titles/format/9781557536808

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Literature as a Moral Laboratory – Reading Selected 20th Century Hebrew Prose
Bar Ilan University Press, series on “interpretation and culture”, 2009. [Hebrew] (276 pp.)
http://www.biupress.co.il/website/index.asp?id=705

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Kaniuk Yoram, Soap. (Editor of the unpublished novel and the author of an epilogue chapter) Yediot Sfarim, 2018

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Center or Periphery – Identity Discourse in Israeli Lliterature, 2021 (single author) [Hebrew]
https://sheilta.apps.openu.ac.il/pls/dlamdal/lamda.perut?p_katalog=108255076

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. The History of Modern Hebrew Literature (18th to 20th centuries) (co-author and a head of development team). Final edition forthcoming 2018 [Hebrew] (3 volumes, 1,000 pp).

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Amos Oz and A.B Yehoshua  - Early Writings, revised version, 2010, 3 volumes  (with Nurit Gertz) [Hebrew] (vol 1, 163 pp.; vol 2, 278 pp.; vol 3, 264 pp.)https://sheilta.apps.openu.ac.il/pls/dlamdal/lamda.perutp_katalog=102462017

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Kaniuk's Canine Writings" AJS Review, 48.1 (April 2024): 127-145. 

Mendekson-Maoz, Adia. "The Testimonies of the Land: Amos Oz's and Amos Gitai's Journeys in the Land of Israel." Dibur Literary Journal 14 (Spring 2023): 25-36

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Trauma and Guilt in Yoram Kaniuk’s Writings: Soap and the Blood Bond Between the Living and the Dead" forthcoming in Journal of Jewish Identities 15.1, January, 2022.
https://muse-jhu-edu.elib.openu.ac.il/article/840937

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Fragments from the Past – Kaniuk's Witnessing and the Poetics of Displacement", (2021) 

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "The Choice of Nomadism – a Route in Shimon Adaf's Prose,"  Mikan 21, 2021 [Hebrew]
https://in.bgu.ac.il/heksherim/mikan/Pages/21.aspx

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Memory and Space in the Autobiographical Writings of Amos Oz and Ronit Matalon" Journal of Israeli History, 2021

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Jerusalem Time: Reading Contemporary Israeli Dystopias" Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 2020

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Palestine, My Love – Place and Home in the Literary Works of Sayed Kashua," , Iyunim 32 (2019). [Hebrew]
https://in.bgu.ac.il/bgi/iyunim/32/Adia-Mendelson-Maoz.pdf

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "The Fallacy of Analogy and the Risk of Moral Imperialism: Israeli Literature and the Palestinian Other." Humanities 2019, 8(3), 119

a. Reprinted: "The Fallacy of Analogy and the Risk of Moral Imperialism: Israeli Literature and the Palestinian Other." In: Ethics and Literary Practice. Ed. Adam Zachary Newton, MDPI book, June 2020, 153-170. 

Frade Galon, Tammy and Mendelson-Maoz Adia."An Autobiography of Her Own—Matalon’s The Sound of Our Steps". The Comparatist 43, (October 2019): 228-251 [authors contributed equally] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/739707/pdf

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Keret's "Living-Dead" and the Sacrifice of Israeli Masculinity. BGU Review - A Journal of Israeli Culture January 2018. http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/heksherim/BGU%20Review%202018/Adia-Mendelson-Maoz-BGUR.pdf

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."The Face of the Dead Other – A Levinasian Reading of Contemporary Israeli Novels by A.B. Yehoshua and Shifra Horn." JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 46.3, 2016.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/658306

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Femininity and Authenticity in Ethiopia and Israel – Asfu Beru's A Different Moon." Shofar  33: 4 (Summer 2015): 158-172.
https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2015.0032

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Shimon Adaf and the Peripheral Novel". Journal of Jewish Identities 7.2
(2014): 1-13.

Amiel Houser, Tammy and Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Against Empathy: Levinas and Ethical Criticism in the 21st Century". JLT - Journal of Literary Theory 8.1 (2014): 199-218 [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."The Road to "Yerussalem" – Asterai and the Hebrew Literature of Beta Israel". Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 20.1 (2014): 42-56.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Diaspora and Homeland—Israel and Africa in the Hebrew-Israeli Literature of Beta Israel." Research in African Literatures 44. 4 (2013): 35-50.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.44.4.35

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Borders, Territory, and Sovereignty in the Works of Contemporary Israeli Women Writers", Women's Studies 63.6 (2014): 788-822.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00497878.2014.921511

a. Steir-Livny, Liat and Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."From the Margins to Prime Time: Israeli Arabs on Israeli Television: The case of Sayed Kashua's 'Arab Labor' "  The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal 4 (December 2013): 78-94. [English and revised version] [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Hurled into the Heart of Darkness - Moral Luck and the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada", Hebrew Studies 52 (2011): 315-339.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "The Terrible power of Ethics: Yehoshua’s A Journey to the End of the Millennium". Dapim - Research in Literature 18  (2011): 61-86. [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia and Steir-Livny, Liat."The Jewish Works of Sayed Kashua"   Israel Studies Review 26.1 (May 2011): 107-129 [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia and Steir-Livny, Liat."Hybridity in Israeli television – the first Israeli-Arab Sitcom", Misgarot media 6 (2011): 31-59 [Hebrew] [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."The Bereaved Father and his Dead son in the Works of A.B Yehoshua", Social Jewish Studies 17.1 (Fall 2010): 116-140.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness in a Framework of Immigration Narratives in Modern Hebrew Literature" Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 9.1 (March 2010): 71 - 87

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“The Question of Polygamy in Yehoshua’s A Journey to the End of the Millennium – Two Moral Views – Two Jewish Cultures”, Shofar  28.1 (Fall 2009): 15-31.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Ethics and Literature: Introduction" Philosophia. 35.2 (2007): 111-116

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia and Weissman Limor. “’Please Forward the Story’: Folk Narratives from the Marketplace to the Virtual World”. In: Sadan – Studies in Hebrew Literature 6 (2007): 343-374 [Hebrew] [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“Ella Bat-Tsion – From Love of Woman to Love of God”
Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4.1 (2006).

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. “A Refugee’s Cry – Brenner’s ‘The Way Out’”
Australian Journal of Jewish Studies XVIII  (2004): 56-78.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Extreme Situations – Horrendous and Grotesque – In the Works of Castel-Bloom and Kerrett," Dapim - Research in Literature 11 (1998): 162-177 [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Oz's Contentious Journey In the Land of Israel" In: Amos Oz: The Legacy of a Writer in Israel and Beyond. Ed. Ranen Omer Sherman. SUNY Press,2022. 

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Grotesque Reflections – Writing the Occupation through the Eyes of the Palestinian Other." In: Poetic Structure, Cognitive Processes and Literary Intuition – Studies in Honor of Professor Reuven Tsur.  Eds Idit Einat-Nov and Uriah Kfir. Teuda XXX, Tel-Aviv University Press, 2020, 267-293 [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia and Steir-Livny, Liat."Contemporary Israeli Television Challenges National Traumas". In: Nationalism and Popular Culture. Ed. Tim Nieguth. Routledge, 2020. 61-78 [authors contributed equally]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "Land, Territory and Border: Liminality in Contemporary Israeli Literature." In: Borderlands and Liminal Subjects - Transgressing the Limits in Philosophy and Literature. Eds. Elbert Decker, Jessica and Dylan Winchock. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 41-49.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."The Locked House of Amos Keinan and Amos Oz". In: Identity in transition in Israeli Culture, a book in Honor of Prof. Nurit Gertz. The Open University Press, 2013, 482-496. [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“A Terrible Power of a Minor Guilt – From Theory to Realization”
In: Intersecting Perspectives: Essays on A.B. Yehoshua's Oeuvre. Eds.: Nitza Ben-Dov, Amir Banbaji and Ziva Shamir. Tel-Aviv: Ha'kibbutz Ha'meuhad,  2010, 550-569. [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.New Vocabulary of Attention: Representation of Moral Problems in Literature – An Aesthetics Perspective in: On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English. Eds: Bárbara Arizti Martín and Silvia Martínez Falquina, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, 366-384.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“On Human Parts – Orly Castel-Bloom and the Israeli Contemporary Extreme” In: Novels of the Contemporary Extreme. Eds. Naomi Mandel and Alain-Philippe Durand. Continuum, 2006, 163-173.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“Checkpoint Syndrome - Violence, Madness, and Ethics in the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada”. In: Textual Ethos Studies, A 21st Century Exploratory Reader in Text and Ethics – Ethics, Literature and the Unexpected. Amsterdam and New Jersey: Rodopi, 2005, 209-227.[Paperback Edition 2008]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia.“First and Last things – Auster's In the Country of Last Things”,In The Meaning of Life. Asa Kasher editor, Adia Mendelson Maoz and Dana Freibach-Heifetz co-editors. Tel-Aviv: Ha'kibbutz Ha'meuhad, 2000, 269-295 [Hebrew]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Minority Literatures in Israel." In Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. Ed. Naomi Seidman. New York: Oxford University Press. (34 pp)

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. The Retrodpective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua. Yael Halevi-Wise. AJS Review 46.2 (November 2022): 450-452. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1353/ajsd.2022.0071

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction
By Oded Nir. H-Net Review [H-Judaic]

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. "LIVES OF WARS AND TRAUMA, review article of War lives: On the army, revenge, grief and the consciousness of war in Israeli fiction By Nitza Ben-Dov and We are broken rhymes: A politics of trauma in Israeli literature By Hannan Hever." Hebrew Studies 59 (2018): 421–430
 

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Nostalgia for a Foreign Land: Studies in Russian-Language Literature in Israel
by Roman Katsman.  Shofar 35.4 (Summer 2017): 149-152

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. An Ideological Death: Suicide in Israeli Literature, by Rachel S. Harris, Israel Studies Review  31 (2016): 150-152.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. Ve-Hi Tehilarekha: Studies in the work of S.Y. Agnon, A.B. Yehoshua, and Amos Oz, by Nitza Ben-Dov, Hebrew Studies 51, 2010: 423-426. 

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia."Teaching Literature to Arab and Jewish Students in Israel: Between National Identity, Language and Gender". In: Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Ed. Rachel S. Harris. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2019, 65-71
https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/2281232

“Being an Immigrant in One’s Homeland - The reflection of narratives of immigration in contemporary Israeli literature”. In conference proceedings: 1st Global Conference: Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging, Multiculturalism, Conflict and Belonging. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford (E-Book - ISBN: 1-904710-56-510). 

"Violence, Morality and Tragedy – The Israeli Soldier in the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada" . In conference proceedings: 9st Global Conference: Violence. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, 2013  

Editor (with Yael Munk, Liat Steir-Livny and Sandra Meiri). Identity in transition in Israeli Culture, a book in Honor of Prof. Nurit Gertz. The Open University Press, 2013. [Hebrew].

Editor, special issue on literature and ethics. Moznayim 2010. [Hebrew].

Guest Editor, “Series: Ethics and Literature”, Philosophia, 2007-2008.

Co-editor: The Meaning of Life. Tel-Aviv: Ha'kibbutz Ha'meuhad, 2000 [Hebrew]

The focus of my research is contemporary Hebrew Literature in its intersection with Israeli culture, society, politics, and ethics. In the last few years I have worked on several projects. The first focuses on the literature of minority groups in Israel and the broad question of hegemony and margins in Israeli society, and the way these are viewed in Israeli literature. The second focuses on questions of space and ethics in contemporary Israeli literature. The third deals with the writing of Yoram Kaniuk, while managing and surveying his literary estate. Finally, the forth project is the study of Hebrew Literature historiography while applying methods of Digital Humanities.
Below is a description of these four projects. 
 
 
Center/Periphery and Israeli Literature
 
My book Multiculturalism in Israel –Literary Perspectives (Purdue UP, 2014) seeks to shed light on new aspects of the history of Israeli literature by applying multicultural perspectives, thus focusing on the relations between the literary hegemony and weakened groups, and analyzing the position of literature within the struggles for recognition and reception of different ethnic cultural groups. In this book, I explore the landscape of Israeli literature through a comparative discussion of the literatures of Palestinian citizens of Israel, of Mizrahim, of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), and of immigrants from Ethiopia.
The main contribution of this book is its comparative goal, drawn through discussions of questions related to the nature of cultural capital; definitions of the literary center and its margins; modes of reception of literary works; major literature and minor literature; the texts’ language (Hebrew or another language) and the question of translation (to/from Hebrew); the literary representation of lost (or imagined) cultures and the question of authenticity; the dialectic relationships between diaspora and homeland; and the concepts of space, place, and deterritorialization.
 
 
In addition to the book, I have published several articles that fall within the scope of this field.
 
 
First, together with Liat Steir-Livny (in a collaboration that had begun some years ago), I have published three articles on Sayed Kashua. In 2011 we published two articles: "The Jewish Works of Sayed Kashua: Subversive or Subordinate?"(Israel Studies Review), and "Hybridity in Israeli television – the first Israeli-Arab sitcom" (Misgarot Media, in Hebrew). "From the Margins to Prime Time: Israeli Arabs on Israeli Television: The case of Sayed Kashua's 'Arab Labor'"(The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal) was published in 2013. In 2019 I published a comprehensive analysis of Kashua's writing - Palestine, My Love – Place and Home in the Literary Works of Sayed Kashua (Iyunim in Hebrew).
 
 
Second, during my research on minor literary groups in Israel, I explored many fascinating texts written by Ethiopian Israelis, and published three articles on this topic:
 
 
"Diaspora and Homeland – Israel and Africa in the Hebrew-Israeli Literature of Beta Israel"(Research in African Literatures, 2013) , discusses the relations between the concepts of diaspora and homeland in Hebrew Ethiopian-Israeli literature. "The Road to 'Yerussalem' – Asterai and the Hebrew Literature of Beta Israel"(Social Identities, 2014), discusses the tension between the voices of two generations in the Hebrew Ethiopian-Israeli literature, and focuses on Omri Teg'amlak Avera’s novel Asterai (2007). In my third article, "Femininity and Authenticity in Ethiopia and Israel – Asfu Beru's A Different Moon" (Shofar, 2015), I discuss the work of the female Ethiopian-Israeli author Asfu Beru, whose collection of stories Yare'ah Aher (A Different Moon) was published in 2002.
 
 
On the subject of Mizrahi literature, I wrote "Shimon Adaf and the Peripheral Novel", (Journal of Jewish Identities, 2014) and later another article titled "The Choice of Nomadism – a Route in Shimon Adaf's Prose", (Mikan 2021, in Hebrew). Relating to Ronit Matalon, I worked with my student Tammy Frade Galon on the reading of The Sound of Our Steps, and our work was published under the title "An Autobiography of Her Own – Matalon’s The Sound of Our Steps" (The Comparatist, 2019).
 
 
Following the death of Amos Oz, I wrote two articles that focus on questions of hegemony and margins. The first, "Memory and Space in the Autobiographical Writings of Amos Oz and Ronit Matalon" (Journal of Israeli History, 2021), compares the two novels, highlights the concepts of space and immigration, and focuses on a crucial difference between them. The second, titled "Oz's Contentious Journey In the Land of Israel" (forthcoming in 2022), shows how this book foreshadowed the contemporary social and political currents in Israeli society.
 
 
Following my academic research on the topic I wrote the book Center or Periphery – Identity Discourse in Contemporary Hebrew Literature (Hebrew) for the Open University course in the program of Hebrew and Comparative Literature (2021, OpenU Press).
 
 
Ethics and Space in Contemporary Hebrew literature
 
Borders, Territories and Ethics –Hebrew Literature in the Shadow of the Intifada, published by Purdue University Press (2018), aims to present a new perspective on the multifaceted relations between ideology, space and ethics, as they are manifested in contemporary Hebrew literature dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli Occupation. The manuscript analyses Israeli prose relating mainly to the first and second Palestinian Intifadas, written between 1980 and 2010. Its corpus spans from major authors such as A. B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, Ronit Matalon and Orly Castel-Bloom, to authors less familiar to the general public such as Roy Politi, Asher Kravitz, Itamar Levi and Dror Green.
 
 
Israeli literary representations of the Occupation and the two Intifadas tend to raise critical ethical questions regarding militarism, humanism, the nature of the State of Israel as a democracy, national identity and its borders, the dualism of citizens who are soldiers, the nature of Zionist education, the acknowledgment of the Other, and the sovereignty of the subject. The manuscript discusses these issues through two frameworks: the first draws on theories of ethics, from the humanist tradition to its criticism, specifically by Levinas, whereas the second applies theories of space, mainly those put forward by Deleuze and Guattari and their successors.
 
 
Over the years previous to this book’s publication, I have written and published articles on this subject, among them "Borders, Territory, and Sovereignty in the Works of Contemporary Israeli Women Writers", (Women's Studies, 2014) ; "Hurled into the Heart of Darkness – Moral Luck and the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada", (Hebrew Studies, 2011) ; "The Bereaved Father and his Dead son in the Works of A. B. Yehoshua", (Social Jewish Studies, 2010); "Checkpoint Syndrome – Violence, Madness and Ethics in the Hebrew Literature of the Intifada", (Textual Ethos Studies, 2005) ; "Against Empathy: Levinas and Ethical Criticism in the 21st Century", co-authored with my colleague Tammy Amiel Houser (JLT – Journal of Literary Theory, 2014); and lastly, "The Face of the Dead Other – A Levinasian Reading of Contemporary Israeli Novels by A. B. Yehoshua and Shifra Horn",(JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, 2016).
 
 
Following the book’s publication, I continued to develop my research on this topic with the article "The Fallacy of Analogy and the Risk of Moral Imperialism: Israeli Literature and the Palestinian Other" (in Humanities 2019). I also began to work on the connections between spaces and times in yet another project which focuses on dystopic contemporary writing, as formulated in the article titled "Jerusalem Time: Reading Contemporary Israeli Dystopias" (Critique 2020).
 
 
In 2021, my Hebrew book Territories and Borders in the Shad
ow of the Intifada: Ethical reading of Hebrew Literature 1987-2007 was published by Magnes Press. This book is a translation and adaptation of Borders, Territories and Ethics, and includes an additional chapter that is based on the evolution of my thinking and my publications on the subject. 
 
  
Yoram Kaniuk – Life and Work
 

I published several articles on Kaniuk's works, mainly on his writing on War and trauma:  
Fragments from the Past – Kaniuk's Witnessing and the Poetics of Displacement (Prooftexts, 2022); Trauma and Guilt in Yoram Kaniuk’s Writings:Soap and the Blood Bond Between the Living and the Dead (Journal of Jewish Identities, 2022) and Kaniuk's Canine Writings (AJS Review, 2022)
My book, Yoram Kaniuk: Other than Biography traces the life and works of the Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk. Rather than presenting a chronological biography, this monograph charts the author’s peregrinations while breaching traditional structures of biographical and literary research. 

The book is organized around the themes and focal points that captivated Kaniuk, and is divided into three thematic parts: War and Trauma covers Kaniuk's response to the 1948 war and the Holocaust in his writings. Kaniuk's attempts to describe severe trauma produced decades of rich and diverse writings that not only revolutionized Israeli literature, but also paved the way toward a new approach to trauma theory in literary analysis.
Self-portrait examines the emergence of Kaniuk's creative self during his stay in New York and his return to Israel. The focus is on Kaniuk's sources of inspiration and influence and the creation of the myth of the artist.
Illness and Old Age grapples with hospitals and cemeteries with his view of the human body in general and the male body in particular. His exploration of this subject, which was also innovative in Hebrew literature, challenged intergenerational relationships within Israeli society as well as core Zionist ideas.
Yoram Kaniuk: Other than Biography won the Bahat Award, Haifa University and is forthcoming in 2025. 



 Hebrew stylometry and the research of Modern Hebrew Prose
 
In 2020, I won (together with Avi Shmidman, Bar-Ilan University) a Ministry of Science grant in the field of Digital Humanities. The project, titled "Computational Stylistic Profiles for the Analysis of Modern Hebrew Prose”, uses computational stylometry as a tool for “distant reading”, which offers a new approach to the analysis of literary texts – one that replaces the selective reading of a canon. 
We presented some of the challenges and the results in conferences, and we submited an article focuses on Haim Beer, and are in the process of writing on computation analysis of gender in Hebrew literature. 

 

Open all
  • Hermony Matan, Mendelson-Maoz, Adia, Nadler Mei-Tal Sebba Elran, Tsafi. The History of Modern Hebrew Literature (18th to 20th centuries) (co-author and a head of development team). Final edition forthcoming 2021 [Hebrew] (3 volumes, 1,000 pp)
    תולדות הספרות העברית החדשה - כרך ג