MA students
Eran Mor
Polish involvement in pogroms against Jews during and after World War II
Supervisor: Prof. Stefan Ihrig
In the work I will seek to examine the involvement of the Polish people in pogroms against the Jews after World War II in the years 1946-7 and the context of the events of the war. The question I would like to examine is whether there was a Polish government initiative aimed at carrying out those pogroms, such as the Nazi ideology and the behavior of Stalin's Soviet rule. I would like to examine the motive behind the pogroms, whether it was due to local reasons, such as economic distress and competition for resources after the war, or whether it was intended from above. If intended from above, whether by sovereign Polish rule or by external rule such as the Russian and Nazi occupation regimes during the war and the control of the NKVD in post-war Poland.
Yael Berkowitz
Supervision vs. Defense - Conflicts Along with Mutual Influences: The Encounter on the Streets of England Between Policemen and Women Between 1860-1914
Supervisor: Prof. Chaya Speyer-Makov
My research deals with encounters between police and women on the streets of major cities in England during the years of 1860 and 1914. The aim of the study is to shed new light on the functioning of the police during the period in question and the situation of working-class women, prostitutes, middle-class women, and public suffragettes. I analyze women's responses to encounter with police officers as a central and essential part of the study, assuming that the study of the encounters without considering women as an agency is a missing study. The perspective of the police is presented in the study from several angles. I refer to the official instructions of the High Command and also to the low-ranking police officers who patrolled the streets, and I present their practical functioning in the street beyond the explicit instructions. In doing so, I examine how the police actually expressed themselves as an arm implementing the prevailing gender perceptions in government. Against the background of the development of the new cities and the change in the status of women in society in 19th century England, the meeting held on the street between police and women reflects a considerable part of the social and political changes of that period.
Preliminary research for a doctorate
Galina Rabinovich
Discourse and Practice of Coercion to Love in the Christian Roman Empire
Supervisor: Dr. Moshe Blidstein
In my research, I intend to explore the problem of violent implementation of the ideology in the Late Roman Empire. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, I examine a special discourse which was formed with the purpose of coercion and violence justification. I share a point of view with the authors who put violence in a wider social, political, and cultural context, without reducing it to an exclusively religious ideology. At the same time, it was the Christian ideology that served as a basis for the formation of the specific discourse to justify violence. A specific feature of this discourse is a paradoxical combination of Christian love and cruelty. I suggest further lines of inquiry: Was Christian ethics a tool to legitimize and validate the judgments of those in power, and to justify violence? What were the essential characteristics of this discourse, its effects on existing forms of social communication? How has the established discourse influenced social reality and become a part of the consciousness of the masses? I suppose that the discourse of justifying violence became an integral part of the political and religious language of the Late Empire, was inherited by the Middle Ages, and persisted into the Modern Age.
Doctoral students
Nathaniel (Nati) Carpenter
The place of the Heraldia (symbols of nobility) in the political and religious culture of early modern England
Moderator: Dr. Zur Shalev
The study is based on many primary sources found in various archives in England as well as on heraldic literature written in the 16th and 17th centuries in England. During the study I stayed several months at Queen Mary University, London and came back from there with rich and varied initial material. One of the chapters in my research deals with antiquarians who set themselves the goal of documenting, out of the sacred space, monuments, and symbols of nobility that were damaged due to the damage of time or man. Another chapter in the study deals with the heraldic literature written at that time and includes a review of about twenty essays or books designed to make the secrets of the field accessible to the young nobleman.
I gave a Twitter account documenting interesting findings from the study: @Natituzzi
Zohar Porchian
Across the horizon - the Atlantic coast of Campeche Bay as the head of an intercultural bridge
Supervisor: Prof. Amos Megged
Using the ethno-historical methodological approach, I deal with the Atlantic coast of the Gulf of Campeche - the southern Gulf of Mexico. The aim of the study is to examine in a panoramic view the role of coastal cultures in general, and their port cities in particular, as part of intercultural interactions in the critical period of the end of the post-classical period in Central America and the early stages of the discovery of America and its conquest by the Spanish Empire [1441-1541]. At the center of the study's attention are the Yukatech-Maya and the Chuntal-Maya cultures on one side of the bay, and the Tutonak and the Mashika cultures on the other. The way that the early research expeditions that left the island of Cuba under the auspices of the Spanish Crown had operated for the first time in these areas is also examined. The starting point of my study is those intercultural interactions - which were based on cultural, ritual, political, military and economic aspects among the various ethnic groups - led coastal cultures to serve as a bridgehead for the Mayan Civilization and the Aztec Covenant on one hand, and created the preconditions which ripened towards the discovery of the "revelation" and enslavement of Mexico and Yucatan by the Spanish conquerors, on the other hand. With the help of analysis and a new interpretation of a variety of primary and secondary sources and more, I seek to shed a powerful spotlight on the uniqueness of the coastal space in Campeche Bay as the dominant space in the history of Central America - from the movement of the founding myths of the indigenous cultures to the beginning of the colonial establishment of the 'new Spain'.
Sergei Krajner
Economics Creates Politics: The Impact of Private Economic Initiatives on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the United States and the USSR
Moderator: Prof. Eran Shalev and Dr. Eli Kook
The work will deal with the influence of private economic initiatives on the part of the Americans, on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR. My research will deal with the period between 1914 (the beginning of the First World War) and 1933 (the official establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR). My research will address the contribution of private economic initiatives to US political procedures, culminating in these processes - official US recognition of the USSR. I will argue, in contrast to the existing research body, that this recognition is a product of private sector initiatives. In fact, we're talking about many initiatives from different fields, with the economy being the "glue" that connects them. These initiatives were made by different people, who often had no connection to each other (other than their citizenship), but their economic activity has greatly contributed to the official U.S. recognition of the USSR. Corporate owners (such as Henry Ford) will be a significant part of private sector representatives in my research.
Avner Gershoni
Lord of the Battle: Collective Biography of the Wehrmacht Senior Generals, July 1943-May 1945
Supervisor: Prof. Arieh Kochavi, Prof. Stefan Ihrig
My research deals with the senior generals of the Wehrmacht in the last part of World War II (July 1943-May 1945). The aim of the study is to examine the senior generals as an elite group and how events in Germany affected their conduct and behavior. By using a collective biography as a method of research, which can highlight the individual in the group and his unique and complex personality and how it affects the group, one can learn about the senior generals who ran armies and commanded entire fronts. This investigation is made possible mainly by an analysis of over 2,000 British intelligence documents on German generals who were held captive in England during the war and whose conversations were recorded without their knowledge, and revealed to investigators only in recent years. The rich and varied materials in information, allow a glimpse into the world and way of thinking of the captive generals, while Germany is in the midst of war and on the verge of defeat. These materials make it possible to learn about them beyond the narrow prism of military history and battle moves and to reveal their personal world, their thinking and worldview. For outwardly they all look alike, with the same outward signs, but in fact they were a conflicted, divided group, full of envy and suspicion.
Hanan Jaeger
Popular music on the brink of the English neo-liberal era: the case of the post-punk musical-social genre during Margaret Thatcher's first tenure 1979-1983
Supervisor: Prof. Oded Heilbrunner and Dr. Eli Cook
The study, which combines authentic texts, historical texts and research in the field, will examine the historical, social, political and economic processes that took place in England in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as reflected in the messages of artists, critics and consumers of popular-period music, categorized as social music. "Post Punk". The study will focus on the years 1979-1983, the first tenure of Margaret Thatcher and the years in which the activity of post-punk bands was at its peak. The study will analyze texts and map messages in the writings of artists, critics, and opinion writers, reflecting key ideas in the social and political discourse of those years in the context of the Thatcher administration's neo-liberal doctrine on the post-punk community. The study will analyze the way in which the neo-liberal principles were expressed in the various texts (protest rejection / adaptation and adoption) of this community. Will be presented through coping (rejection / adaptation), as reflected in the texts of the post-punk community, in the face of the Thatcher administration's neo-liberal policies. The research will focus on texts from songs by several bands and singers representing the genre (genre) as well as articles and interviews related to those bands, including: Public Image Ltd (London), Joy division (Manchester), The Cure (Crowley), Gang of four ( Leeds), The fall (Manchester), The Jam (Surrey), Elvis Costello (London) and later also The Smiths (Manchester).
University's Dear - letter to Prof. Akiva Gilboa (in Hebrew and English)
