Ruth Tsoffar

Name: Ruth Tsoffar

Title(s):

• Associate Professor of Comparative Literature & Women's Studies
• Associate Adjunct in the Department of Anthropology

Contact Information: 734.936.5766 , rtsoffar@umich.edu

International Institute Affiliation(s):

• CMENAS

Department Affiliation(s):

• Comparative Literature
• Women's Studies

Education Background: University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1993, Near Eastern Studies Department) University of California, Berkeley (M.A. 1985, Department of Anthropology, Folklore) Haifa University (B.A. 1981, Hebrew Literature and Language)

Research/Teaching Specialization: literatures and cultures of Israeli and Jewish Culture, focusing on multicultural feminism, and noncanonical writers. Her teaching emphasizes the social and political role of writing and reading in the construction of collective and subjective consciousness. She is the author of The Stains of Culture: an Ethno-Reading of Karaite Jewish Women (Wayne State University Press, 2006). Her recent article, “’A Land that Devours its People:’ Mizrahi Writing from the Gut,” (Body & Society, 2006) is part of her current research which explores responses to national ideology by women, Israelis of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry, and Palestinians, entitled, Cannibal Ideology: Sexuality, Ethnicity and Colonialism in Hebrew Cultures (advance contract, University of California Press).

Area/Int'l Course(s) Taught: Feminism, sexuality and gender; Colonialism, ethnicity, and nationalism; Poetry and poetics; Hebrew culture and literature; The politics of writing, reading, and culture in Israel and the Middle East; Biblical narrative, ethnography and folklore

Publications:

• The Search for Home: Films by and About Middle Eastern and North African Jews. 1996.