Lior Libman,
Associate Professor of Israel Studies/ Director of the Center for Israel Studies
Judaic Studies
Biography
Lior Libman is Associate Professor of Israel Studies and the Director of the Center for Israel Studies. She is a literary scholar and cultural historian specializing in Socialist Zionism and the Kibbutz. Her book (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025; winner of the 2025 Korenblat Award for Best Book in Israel Studies) examines the imagery and political imagination of the kibbutz in the stormy years of the transition from the pre-State Jewish yishuv in Palestine to the State of Israel. Her articles, in English and in Hebrew, were published in (Studies in Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel) and , among other places. Currently, she is working on two projects: one on the kibbutz-image in modern Hebrew literary canon, and the other on the Zionist Left in the aftermath of 1967.
Libman teaches various courses on Israeli literature from 1948 to the present, and explores with her students questions of nation-building, conflict, class, gender, and ethnicity.
Education
- PhD, MA, BA: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Research Interests
- Modern Hebrew and Israeli Literature and Cultural Studies
- Socialist-Zionism
- The Kibbutz
- Critical Theory
- Cultural and Intellectual History
Teaching Interests
- Introduction to Israeli Literature
- Becoming Israeli: Coming-of-Age Novels
- The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Israeli and Palestinian Literatures
- The Kibbutz in Israeli Culture
- Hebrew Literature in Hebrew: Advanced Seminar