This course explores representations of disability within Hebrew and Israeli culture. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it looks at personal and socio-political conceptualizations of disability. This course pursues various applications of physical, mental, and emotional disability experiences and theories to Zionist, Jewish-Israeli narratives and rhetoric. Thus, while we will examine how the social context of disability in Israel affects representations of disability, we will also consider the ways in which disabled experiences and the notion of disability in general raise questions about Israeli subjectivity.
While in the past the experience of disability has been viewed as a condition of personal deficit and misfortune, our course will explore the work of writers, artists, scholars and activists, who have reinterpreted disability as a fact of life and a form of human variation. By discussing representations of people with disabilities, the course will provide in-depth analysis of: the roles and stereotypes of disabled figures in the Zionist movement, women with disabilities in Israeli Film, people with disabilities as artists and performers, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israeli disabled dance and performance, disability and the Holocaust, images of madness and emotional distress in Hebrew literature, and Crip and alternative self-representations by artists with disabilities.

This course fulfills the following Major requirements: Geographical area (D) and Chronological period (III).