The INSTRUCTOR: Professor Galit Hasan-Rokem

Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem was born in Helsinki, Finland and moved to Israel with her family when she was twelve. She studied under well-known folklore professors in Israel, Finland and the US. She received her PhD at Hebrew University 1978, with complementary disciplinary studies at the University of Helsinki. She has taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1984, as well as teaching and lecturing on folklore in Universities around the world.

Currently, she is the Max and Margarethe Grunwald Professor of Folklore at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, teaching at the Department of Hebrew Literature, Yiddish & Folklore in the Faculty of the Humanities. She has served as the Head of the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies (2001-2004) and filled numerous other academic and administrative duties at the Hebrew University, as well as in Israeli society. She has served as visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley a number of times (1982-83; 1991; 1999; 2000, 2006-7 and many shorter periods) and has been invited to deliver named lectures, among other at Stanford University, University of Toronto, University of Chicago and University of Michigan.

Her public service includes President of the International Society of Folk Narrative Research (1998-2005). She has recently (2007) been elected as member of the Swedish King Gustav Adolf Academy for Folk Culture.

In addition to her regular academic home her research has been conducted at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem (1988-1989; 2005); at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2204-5) and she presently participates in a three year project at the Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University. She has conducted research cooperation with Professor Regina Bendix from the Georg-August University in Göttingen. A number of Hasan-Rokem’s graduate students have attained tenure track positions in research universities both in Israel and abroad.

Her publications include a number of scholarly books in Hebrew and English, on folklore – especially in Rabbinic literature; on feminist poetry; and other related topics, numerous scholarly articles, as well as three volumes of poetry in Hebrew, partly published in English translations. In addition to a number of local and international academic editorships she is a founding member of the editorial board of Palestine-Israel Journal, as well as the international publication Proverbium, and a steady contributor to the Encyclopädie des Märchens issued by the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen.

An interview with the Professor may be foundhere.

Prof. Hasan-Rokem has written numerous scholarly books and articles. Among her publications in English are:

• Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel: Life History, Politics, and Culture, Co-edited with Ruth Kark and Margalit Shilo. Waltham MA: Brandeis University Press 2008.
• Tales of the Neighborhood: Jewish Narrative Dialogues in Late Antiquity, University of California Press 2003.
• Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature, Stanford University Press 2000.
• The Defiant Muse - Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present, a bilingual anthology, co-edited with Shirley Kaufman and Tamar Hess, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1999.
• The Wandering Jew: Essays in the Interpretation of a Christian Legend, Co-edited with Alan Dundes, Indiana University Press 1986.

A full list may be found here.