Rachel Feldhay Brenner
American college professor (1946–2021)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rachel Feldhay Brenner (1946 – February 4, 2021) was a Polish-born college professor, writer, and scholar of Jewish literature. She was president of the Association for Israel Studies from 2007 to 2009. Brenner passed following a brief battle with cancer.[1]
Rachel Feldhay Brenner | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 Zabrze, Poland |
| Died | February 4, 2021 (aged 74–75) Madison, Wisconsin |
| Occupations | College professor, writer, scholar |
Early life and education
Rachel Feldhay was born in Zabrze, Poland, the daughter of Michael Feldhay and Helena Feldhay.[2] She moved to Israel with her family in 1956.[3] She earned a bachelor's degree at Hebrew University, a master's degree at Tel Aviv University, and a PhD at York University.[4][5]
Career
Brenner joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin in 1992, in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies. She chaired the department from 2004 to 2007. She was a senior fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities,[5] a fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,[6] and president of the Association for Israel Studies from 2007 to 2009.[7] She served on the board of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA).[4] "It is my belief," she explained of her work, "that literature affects human consciousness and effects change in social practices, yet its impact is imperceptible, often delayed, and hard to measure."[8]
Publications
Brenner published seven books, and more than 80 articles in academic journals[3] including Modern Judaism,[9] Comparative Literature Studies,[10] Studies in American Jewish Literature,[11] Israel Studies,[12] Slavic Review,[13] AJS Review,[14] Jewish Studies Quarterly,[15] Discourse,[16] Studies in Religion,[17] Holocaust and Genocide Studies,[18] and Critical Inquiry.[19] In 1992 she won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for literary criticism.[4]
Books
- Assimilation and Assertion: The Response to the Holocaust in Mordecai Richler’s Writing (1989)[20]
- A.M. Klein, The Father of Canadian Jewish Literature: Essays in the Poetics of Humanistic Passion (1990)[21]
- Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust: Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum (1997)[22]
- Inextricably Bonded—Israel Jewish and Arab Writers Re-Visioning Culture (2003)[23]
- The Freedom to Write: The Woman-Artist and the World in Ruth Almog’s Fiction (2008, in Hebrew)[24]
- The Ethics of Witnessing: The Holocaust in Polish Writers’ Diaries from Warsaw, 1939-1945 (2014)[25]
- Polish Literature and the Holocaust: Eyewitness Testimonies, 1942–1947 (2019)[26]
Selected articles
- "A. M. Klein's 'The Hitleriad': Against the Silence of the Apocalypse" (1990)[11]
- "Edith Stein: A reading of her feminist thought" (1994)[17]
- "Between Identity and Anonymity: Art and History in Aharon Megged's Foiglman" (1995)[14]
- "Back to the Future: Evolution of the A/Teleological in Recent Israeli Fiction" (1996)[16]
- "Writing Herself against History: Anne Frank's Self-Portrait as a Young Artist" (1996)[9]
- "Mother's Curse or Cursed Mother: Forgotten Stories in Forbidden Languages in Meir Shalev's Esau" (1997)[15]
- "'Hidden Transcripts' Made Public: Israeli Arab Fiction and Its Reception" (1999)[19]
- "The Search for Identity in Israeli Arab Fiction: Atallah Mansour, Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas" (2001)[12]
- "Voices from Destruction: Two Eyewitness Testimonies from the Stanisławów Ghetto" (2008)[18]
- "Ideology and Its Ethics: Maria Dąbrowska’s Jewish (and Polish) Problem" (2011)[13]
Personal life and legacy
Brenner died from cancer in 2021, aged 74 years, in Madison, Wisconsin.[4][27][28] The Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award in Polish-Jewish Studies was founded in 2021, in her memory, by the PIASA.[29]