Amihay offers a pioneering study of the unique nexus between literature and photography in the works of Hebrew authors. Exploring the use of photography—both as a textual element and through the inclusion of actual images— Amihay shows how the presence of visual elements in a textual work of fiction has a powerful subversive function. Contemporary Hebrew authors have turned to photography as a tool to disrupt narratives and give voice to marginalized sectors in Israel, including women, immigrants, Mizrahi Israelis, LGBTQ+ individuals, second-generation Holocaust survivors, and traumatized army veterans.
Amihay discusses standard novels alongside graphic novels, challenging the dominance of the written word in literature. In addition to providing a poetic analysis of imagetext pages, Amihay addresses the social and political issues authors are responding to, including gender roles, Zionism, the ethnic divide in Israel, and its Palestinian minority. In exploring these avant-garde novels and their authors, Amihay elevates their significance and calls for a more expansive definition of canonical Hebrew literature.
关于作者
Ofra Amihay is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Shanghai Normal University. She holds a Ph D from New York University and has taught at Lawrence University, Georgetown University, and UC Santa Barbara. In 2015 she curated the photography exhibition ‘Text and the City’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia. She is the co-editor of the volume
The Future of Text and Image (Cambridge Scholars, 2012) and has published articles on comics and graphic novels, Hebrew literature, children’s literature, and photography.