Zohar

Weiman-Kelman

Zohar Weiman-Kelman received her Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012.  Weiman-Kelman’s research explores intersections of Jewish history and queer theories of kinship and temporality. She recently completed her first book manuscript, What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting: Queer Histories of Jewish Women Writers. Reading poetry in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English from 1880 to 1990, the book examines how literary lineage is constructed and challenged by Jewish women. Between Jewish women’s limited access to the past and the precarious future of Yiddish, it offers a queer genealogy based in nonlinear transmissions, affective connections and cross-temporal encounters. Before coming to the Katz Center, she held the Anne Tanenbaum Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Haifa. Dr. Weiman-Kelman’s new project, Philology, Sexology, and the Future of Yiddish, looks at intersections of Yiddish language and sexuality.