The Un-Chosen Body: Disability Culture in Israel - Paperback

by Ilana Szobel (Author)

Back Jacket

In the first work to bring crip aesthetics into conversation with Israel studies, Ilana Szobel explores disability culture and disability justice through the work of artists with disabilities in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. For these performers, filmmakers, and artists, art allows them to reimagine and reframe accessibility in artistic, cultural, and political spaces while also connecting the embodied experience of disability to the power dynamics of geopolitical violence. Szobel demonstrates how these artists create community, make nuanced depictions of identity and desire, and imagine disability futures.

Author Biography

Ilana Szobel is the Braun Chair Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at Brandeis University, specializing in Hebrew literature, women and gender studies, and disability studies. She is the author of Flesh of My Flesh: Sexual Violence in Modern Hebrew Literature, which was a finalist for the 2021 Best Book in Israel Studies. Szobel has also authored A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch and the poetry collection Once Upon a Days (Beshekvar hayamim habaim). Szobel was a 2019-20 Visiting Scholar at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University as well as a 2023-24 Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University.