Galeet
Dardashti
Bio
Galeet Dardashti is both anthropologist and renowned vocalist/composer. Her publications examine Israeli music/media, Mizrahi cultural politics, and the political economy of philanthropy; she is currently completing a book on the Mizrahi piyyut (sacred song) phenomenon in Israel. Dardashti has held postdoctoral fellowships at NYU and Rutgers and most recently was Assistant Professor of Jewish Music/Musician in Residence at JTS. For spring 2021, she is the Artist-in-Virtual-Residence at Indiana University’s Jewish Studies program. Her research at the Katz Center examines a nascent movement of young liberal “Mizrahi” North American Jews. As founder/leader of the all-woman ensemble Divahn, and through her multi-disciplinary commissions The Naming and Monajat, Dardashti has also earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer of Middle Eastern Jewish music.
Selected publications
- “Televised Agendas: How Global Funders Make Israeli Television More Jewish,” Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal (2015)
- “‘Music of Peace’ at a Time of War: Middle Eastern Music Amidst the Second Intifada,” in Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture, ed. Ranan Omer Sherman and Rachel S. Harris (Wayne State University Press, 2013)
- “The Buena Vista Baghdad Club: Negotiating Local, National, and Global Representations of Jewish Iraqi Musicians in Israel,” in Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space—Traditions of Place, ed. Anna Lipphardt and Alexandra Nocke (Ashgate Publishing, 2008)
