Speculative Fiction of Twenty-First-Century Israel

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

In the last twenty years, there has been an unprecedented rise in speculative fiction in Israeli literature. While futuristic stories have been prevalent in Hebrew literature since the early 1900s, particularly in the form of utopian and dystopian novels, this recent wave shows a more significant association with the corpus of global science fiction, fantasy, and alternative history. These new works circumvent some of the political impasses with which realist literature reckons.

Each paper in this panel grapples with the idea of improbability—an unlikeliness that refracts and estranges reality—through a reading of a literary or artistic work. Examining these case studies side by side, this panel provides a productive space to meditate on both the particular and the broader implications of speculative fiction in the 21st-century.

The Presenter of A-topography: Speculating Maps of Change is Dr. Ella Elbaz. She will be an assistant professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Haifa.

The Chair and Respondent is Prof. Uri S. Cohen. He is a full professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Tel-Aviv University.

Sub Unit

• Modern Hebrew Literature

Chair

• Yaakov Herskovitz, Tel Aviv University

Individual Presentations

• A-topography: Speculating Maps of Change - Ella Elbaz, The University of Haifa

• The Treason of the Poets: Piyyut’s Revival and Lyric Poetry’s Decline in Shimon Adaf’s 26th-Century Novel KFOR - Oren Yirmiya, University of California, Berkeley

• A Life Foretold: Speculative Elements and (Non)Native Writering in Shani Boianjiu’s THE PEOPLE OF FOREVER ARE NOT AFRAID - Yael Flusser, The University of Chicago