עברית
Associate Professor

Prof. Michal Ben־Horin

Telephone
03-5318281
Fax
03-738400/8
Email
michal.ben-horin@biu.ac.il
Office
bldg. 1004 first floor
Fields of Interest

German literature, literature and music, poetics of memory, Holocaust representation

Prof. Michal Ben-Horin joined the Department of Comparative Literature in 2014; she is an expert in modern German literature, music and literature interdisciplinarity, and Theories of Memory and the representations of the Holocaust in Jewish and German literature.

Reception Hours
by appointment
Personal Website
Research Categories
Interdisciplinary Research in Literature
CV

Michal Ben-Horin received her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Tel Aviv University and holds degrees in Comparative Literature and the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. A Research Fellow in German-Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (2009/10), Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (2006), and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Haifa (2005). She received the Council for Higher Education Rotenstreich Scholarship (2002/3), Franz Rosenzweig Fellowship (2004), The Minerva Fellowship (2007), a Research Grant of the City of Vienna and the HUJI European Forum (2011), and a Research Grant of the Minerva Institute for German History at TAU (2013).

Michal taught at the University of Florida, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv University courses on German and Austrian literatures, Modern Jewish and Israeli Literature, critical theory, memory poetics, and gender. Since 2013 she teaches at Bar-Ilan University courses on Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann, German Romanticism, theories of literature and music, and literature and testimony after the Holocaust. Head of the Department of Comparative Literature between 2017-2022.

She is the author of Musical Biographies - The Music of Memory in Post-1945 German Literature (De Gruyter, 2016), Reading the Voices – Musical Poetics between German and Hebrew (Bialik Institute, 2022), and co-editor with Galili Shahar of Natural History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald between Literature and History (The Hebrew U Press, 2009). Among her articles and book chapters are: "Taboo, Disaster and Acoustic Reminders in Yehudit Hendel and Ruth Almog", Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts (2019), "The Secular and its Dissonances in Modern Jewish Literature," Secularism in Question (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), "Perceptual Distortions in Böll, Bachmann and Celan," Seeing Perception (Cambridge Scholars, 2007), "Photography and Music in Ingeborg Bachmann and Monika Maron," German Life and Letters (2006), "Musik einer Erinnerungspoetik: Fallstudie über deutschsprachige und hebräische Literatur nach '45", Weimarer Beiträge  (2004).

 

 

 

 

Research

My research includes explorations in the fields of German Studies and of Comparative and Modern Jewish Literatures. Its innovation lies in interdisciplinary and intertextual thought around different mediums of representation that confront the dilemmas inherent in verbal language. This research approach integrates literary and memory studies, musicological, aesthetic, and critical theory. My first book Musical Biographies – The Music of Memory in Post-1945 German Literature (2016) demonstrates how for authors such as Thomas Mann, Günter Grass, Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, music is not only tool of representation, but becomes a medium that powerfully attests to the dilemmas of handling traumatic experience. My second book Reading the Voices – Musial Poetics between German and Hebrew (2022) explores works by Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Arnold Schoenberg, Nathan Shaham, Yehudit Hendel and Amalia Kahana-Carmon.

 

 

 

 

Courses

 

 

Kafka's Riddle: Text and Context

Love Discourse in Literature and Music

Romanticism and Exotic Cultures

Dangerous Play: 19th-20th Century German Theatre

Cultures of Memory: Germany and Israel after the Holocaust

Myth Transformations in Modern German Literature

Thomas Mann between the Aesthetic and the Political

Debate in German: Literature as Arena of Conflict

Contemporary Austrian Women's Writing

Musical Readings in Modern Jewish Literature

Gender and Memory in Modern German Literature

The Voice and the Text: Theoretical and Poetic Aspects

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publications

Books

  1. Michal Ben-Horin. (2022). Reading the Voices: Musical Poetics Between German and Hebrew. Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute. [In Hebrew]
  2. Michal Ben-Horin. (2016). Musical Biographies: The Music of Memory in Post-1945 German Literature, Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
  3. Michal Ben-Horin, Galili Shahar, eds. (2009). Nature History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald between History and Literature, Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press. 

 

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

  1. Michal Ben-Horin. (2022), The Language and its Sound in Light of Celan's Visit to Israel. In: Celan/69. Amir Eshel and Galili Shahar (Eds.), Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute. [In Hebrew].
  2. Michal Ben-Horin. (2022). Between Gracchus and Rotpeter: Tuvia Rübner returns to Franz Kafka. Criticism and Interpretation: Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Culture. [In Hebrew].
  3. Michal Ben-Horin. (2022). "Untold Story, Indirect Course: My Path into the Field of Holocaust Literature and Representation", In: Their Lives, Our Words, Phyllis B. Lassner and Judy Tydor B. Schwartz eds., Bloomsbury Publishing.
  4. Michal Ben-Horin. (2021). Amalia Kahana-Carmon's Song of the Bats. Israel Studies in Language and Society (14) 1: 156-174.
  5. Michal Ben-Horin. (2021). What is Heard in the Mountains: Paul Celan's Gespräch im Gebirg in the Light of its Hebrew Translation. Yod: Revue des études hébraïques et juives modernes et contemporaines (23): 187-204. https://journals.openedition.org/yod/4983
  6. Michal Ben-Horin, (2020). "Gracchus's Boat: Emigration, Tradition and Translingualism in Tuvia Ruebner", Archives of Emigration /Archiwum Emigracji, 28: 184-198. http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/AE.2020.013
  7. Michal Ben-Horin. (2020). Hebrew Literature and Music. In Naomi Seidman (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Jewish Studies. Oxford University Press, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199840731/obo-9780199840731-0196.xml
  8. Michal Ben-Horin. (2020). Voice and the Sacred in Arnold Schünberg and Aharon Appelfeld. In Avi Elqayam and Shlomy Mualem (Eds.), Theopoetics, (429-458). Tel Aviv: Idra. [In Hebrew].
  9. Michal Ben-Horin. (2019). Taboo, Disaster and Acoustic Reminders in the Yehudit Hendel and Ruth Almog. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts. (61)3: 359-386.
  10. Michal Ben-Horin. (2019). The Sound of the Unsayable: Jewish Secular Culture in Schoenberg and Appelfeld. Religions (10) 5: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10050334 
  11. Michal Ben-Horin. (2019). Self-Translation and Translation of the Self as Testimony in Tuvia Rübner’s Oeuvre. Mikan: Journal for Hebrew and Israeli Literature and Culture Studies (19): 532-553.
  12. Michal Ben-Horin. (2018). Game Over: Israeli and German Visual Poetics of Catastrophe. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (36) 3: 78-109.
  13. Michal Ben-Horin. (2018). On Terror: Nevet Yitzhak's Video Art between Singspiel and Trauerspiel. Geschichte und Repräsentation: Sinne – Sprache – Bilder. Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte (46): 72-91.
  14. Michal Ben-Horin. (2018). Choice of Language and the Quest for Israeli Identity in the Works of Tuvia Ruebner and Aharon Appelfeld. Polish Political Science Yearbook. (47)2: 414-423.
  15. Michal Ben-Horin. (2017). Krull's Show, or Thomas Mann's Carnival. Odot: Journal for Essays and Criticism, no. 4.
  16. Michal Ben-Horin. (2017). The Silence of the Decapitated: Between Aesthetics and Politics, Between Europe and the Middle East. In Nevet Yitzhak Video Works, Artport, pp. 53-59.
  17. Michal Ben-Horin (2015). The Secular and its Dissonances in Modern Jewish Literature. In Alexander Joskowicz and Ethan Katz (Eds.), Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 115-141.
  18. Michal Ben-Horin. (2015). Art, Society and Politics: The Aesthetic Thought of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. In Hana Herzig (Ed.), The Language of the Arts: Disciplines and Interdisciplinary in the Arts, (271-326). Ra'anana: The Open University Press.  [In Hebrew].
  19. Michal Ben-Horin. (2012). Working through Tradition: Nevet Yitzhak's Schneckentempo and A Great Joy Tonight. Hamidrasha, Annual Journal of Beit Berl Academic College. pp. 160-178. [In Hebrew]
  20. Michal Ben-Horin. (2010). Nazism and Musical Biographies: Thomas Mann and Günter Grass. Criticism and Interpretation: Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Culture (43): 193-211. [In Hebrew]
  21. Galili Shahar and Michal Ben-Horin (2008). Franz Kafka und Max Brod. In Oliver Jahraus and Bettina von Jagow (Eds.), Franz Kafka. Leben-Werk-Wirkung, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 85-96.
  22. Michal Ben-Horin (2009). Musical Moments: Listening in the Work of Sebald. In Michal Ben-Horin and Galili Shahar (Eds.), Natural History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald between Literature and History, (99-115). Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Press. [In Hebrew].
  23. Michal Ben-Horin. (2009). The History of Hebrew Literature in Israel. In: M. Bard and D. Nachmias (Eds.). Online Textbook. Israel Studies: An Anthology. 21 pp. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/anthologycvr.html
  24. Michal Ben-Horin (2008). Literature and the Compulsion of the Past: On the Work of Memory in German Literature after 1945. Alpayim – A Multidisciplinary Journal for Contemporary Thought and Literature (32): 206-231. [In Hebrew].
  25. Michal Ben-Horin (2007). Seeing the Voices, Hearing the Sights: Perceptual Distortions in Böll, Bachmann and Celan. In Silke Horstkotte, Karin Leonhard (Eds.), Seeing Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 98-127.
  26. Michal Ben-Horin (2006). Tones of Memory: Music and Time in the Prose of W. G. Sebald and Yoel Hoffmann. In Jo Alison Parker, Michael Crawford, Paul Harris (Eds.), Time and Memory: The Study of Time XII, (163-175). Leiden: Brill.
  27. Michal Ben-Horin. (2006). Musical Discourse and Historical Narratives in Hebrew Literature: Kenaz's Musical Moment and Shaham's The Rosendorf Quartet. Israel Studies Forum – An Interdisciplinary Journal (21) 2: 85-101.
  28. Michal Ben-Horin. (2006). Memory Metonymies: Music and Photography in Ingeborg Bachmann and Monika Maron. German Life and Letters (59)2: 233-248.
  29. Michal Ben-Horin. (2005). Compositions of Memory: The Musical Poetics of Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard. Dappim – Journal for Research in Literature (14-15): 363-388. [In Hebrew].
  30. Michal Ben-Horin. (2004). Musik einer Erinnerungspoetik: Fallstudie über deutschsprachige und hebräische Literatur nach '45. Weimarer Beiträg – Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft, Ästhetik und Kulturwissenschften (50) 3: 404-426.
Media

 

Selected Interviews

Britta Boehle on Thomas Mann's letter to Dr. Korrodi, Interviewed on Reshet Aleph with Shiri Ben Ari (in Hebrew), 21.9.15

Thomas Mann and the Current German Literature, Interviewed on Galei Zahal with Tzipi Gon Gross (in Hebrew), 14.8.15

Guenter Grass 1927-2015. Interview on TLV1 Radio Station, 16.4.15

Heydrich's Schnellbrief: A Literary Reading and Text Analysis. Interviewed on Galei Zahal with Kobi Meydan (in Hebrew), 28.4.14

Anna Seghers on Exile and WWII. Interviewed on Haaretz with Avner Shapira (in Hebrew), 29.10.13

Forgetting One's Stasi Past: German Writer Christa Wolf's Revealing Works didn't Divulge everything, Interviewed on Haaretz with Avner Shapira, in Hebrew on Aug. 23, 2013.

Eng. Edition http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/.premium-1.544275, August 29, 2013

Nevet Yitzhak’s Schneckentempo (in Hebrew), Double Exposure Video Project, The Shpilman Institute for Photography, June 26, 2013.

Kassandras Rufe in Israel. Christa Wolfs Erzählung in Welten mit Schutzwall, Charlotte Misselwitz ed., Deutschland Radiokultur, November 25, 2012 http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/literatur/1926290/

Elfriede Jelinek's LiebhaberInnen (in Hebrew), Radio Broadcast. Ruth Keren ed. Kol Israel Reshet Aleph, October 2004.

Thomas Bernhard's Der Untergeher (in Hebrew), Radio Broadcast. Ilana Haskel ed. Kol Israel Reshet Aleph, December 2002.

 

 

 

 

 

Last Updated Date : 22/02/2023