Hannan Hever

Biography

Hannan Hever was born in Israel (January 14, 1953), graduated as an Electronics Technician fromhigh school (1971), graduated from the Hebrew University (Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, 1979) and received  his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University  in 1984 (supervisor: Dan Miron, title:Poets and Zealouts: The Rise of the Hebrew Political Poem). Post-Doc (Intellectual History) at Berkeley University (1986-1987).  Teaching in Israel at the Hebrew University (1979-1989, 2000-2012) and Tel-Aviv University (1989-2000). Taught at Northwestern University, An Arbor, Michigan University and Columbia University. Israeli literary critic and editor (two series of fiction in Am-Oved Publishing House and Hakkibutz Hameuchad Publishing House), a senior fellow at Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and an Israeli Political activist against the Israeli occupation (Yesh Gevul and the 21st Year political movements).

Research Interests

• Cultural history of Modern Hebrew poetry and prose
• Critical theory
• Postcolonial Theory
• Theory of cultural and literary critique
• History and politics of the Hassidic tale
• Hebrew Literature
• Jewish Literatures 
• Theories of Nationalism and Postcolonialism
• Marxism

Selected Recent Publications

• Suddenly the Sight of War: Nationalism and Violence in the Hebrew Poetry of the 1940s (Hebrew) (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001)
• Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon, Nation Building and Minority Discourse (New York University Press, 2002)
• Toward the Longed-For Shore: The Sea in Modern Hebrew Culture (Hebrew) (Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the Van Leer Institute, 2007)
• With the Power of God: Theology and Politics in Modern Hebrew Literature (Hebrew) (Hakibbutz Hameuchad and the Van Leer Institute 2013)
• Nativism, Zionism and Beyond, Three Essays on  Nativist Hebrew Poetry, (Rudolph Lectures, Syracuse University, 2014)
• To Inheret the Land, to Conquer the Space: The Beginning of Hebrew Poetry in Eretz-Israel (Hebrew) (Mossad Bialik, 2015)
• The Politics of Trauma in Israeli Literature, Magnes Publishing House, 2017, (Heb)
• The Literature of 1948: Philology and Responsibility, The Freie Universität, Berlin, Brill, Publishing House., 2019
• Literature of a Tribe, Literature of a Nation, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing House, 2021, (Heb.)
• Hasidism, Haskala, Zionism, Chapters in Literary Politics, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023