Dr Adriana X Jacobs
Dr Adriana X Jacobs
Fellow
Associate Professor and Cowley Lecturer in Modern Hebrew Literature; Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Research Interests:
Modern Hebrew and Israeli literature; contemporary poetry; translation history and theory; literary translation; comparative poetics; diaspora and transnationalism; multilingualism and translingualism; comparative poetics;
political poetry and digital culture.
Current Projects:
I am the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry (2018, University of Michigan Press), which offers a translation-centered reading of
the development of modern Hebrew poetry. I have published widely on contemporary Hebrew and Israeli poetry and translation, including articles in Shofar, PMLA, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and Prooftexts.
My translations of Hebrew poetry have appeared in Gulf Coast, Anomaly, World Literature Today, North American Review, The Ilanot Review, among others, as well as in the collection Women’s Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant (Wayne
State UP, 2016). In 2015, I was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant for my translation of Vaan Nguyen’s The Truffle Eye (Zephyr Press, forthcoming in 2020).
My current book project examines contemporary poetry of crisis within a comparative framework that brings together poetry in Hebrew, Spanish and English. I am affiliated with the research programme Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation and
co-convenor of the MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation.
Courses Taught:
- Modern Hebrew and Israeli Literature
- Post-War Jewish Literature
- Jewish World Literature
Recent Publications:
- “Ha-im ata dome le-yom aviv?: Anna Herman Translates the Sonnets,” European Judaism50 (Spring/Autumn 2018): 97-105.
- “Money, so much money: Reading Tahel Frosh’s Avarice," Dibur 5 (Spring 2018): 87-99.
- “HO! and the Transnational Turn in Israeli Poetry,” Prooftexts 36.1-2. Special Issue on Jewish/World Literature: 136-166.
- “Anna Herman and the Goldberg Variations,” PMLA 132.2 (March): 421-426.
- “Where You Are From: The Poetry of Vaan Nguyen.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 33, 4, Contemporary Israeli Literature (Summer 2015): 83-110.
- “Hebrew on a Desert Island: The Case of Annabelle Farmelant.” Studies in American Jewish Literature, Special Issue, eds. Kathryn Hellerstein and Maeera Shreiber (Spring 2015): 154-174.
- “The Go-Betweens: Leah Goldberg, Yehuda Amichai and the Figure of the Poet Translator,” The Blackwell Companion to Translation Studies, eds. Sandra Bermann and Catherine Porter (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd, 2014): 479-491. - “Hebrew Remembers Yiddish: The Poetry of Avot Yeshurun.” Choosing Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Literature, Culture and History, eds. Lara Rabinovitch, Shiri Goren and Hannah Pressman (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 2013): 296-313. - “From IDF to .pdf: War Poetry in the Israeli Digital Age.” Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture, eds. Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
2012): 153-166. - “Paris or Jerusalem: The Multilingualism of Esther Raab.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 26, 1/2 (2006): 6-28.