EVENT DETAILS

Miryam Segal (Queens College, CUNY): "From Prophet to Worker. Labor Politics and the Rise of Women's Poetry in Hebrew"

Miryam Segal: "From Prophet to Worker. Labor Politics and the Rise of Women's Poetry in Hebrew"

The figure of prophet dominated the Hebrew poetry of Bialik, Greenberg and others at the turn of the century. But in the teens and twenties the prophet was joined (and to some extent superceded) by a very different figure—the worker. This period also saw the appearance of Hebrew poetry by women. From Prophet to Worker will revisit the question of why women’s poetry appeared in such volume when it did, and answer the question anew by looking both inside and outside poetry: at the changing figuration of the poet within poems, and at the poet’s role in society and in the Labor movement. As a labor poet, a laborer and the most famous woman of the milieu, Rachel Bluvshtain and her poetry will provide a subplot to the discussion.

Miryam Segal is assistant professor in the department of Classical, Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at Queens College, the City University of New York. She is the author of a book on poetry and great accent shift in modern Hebrew language (A New Sound in Hebrew Poetry), and an editor of The Embarrassment of Scriptures. She is writing a book on the rise of women’s poetry in Hebrew and the poetry of Rachel Bluvshtain.