The Schusterman Center for Israel Studies invites you to "The Deaf Community in Israel: Israeli Dancer and Poet Tami Assouline in Conversation with Professor Marco Di Giulio", which discovers the dynamic culture of Israel's deaf community. Free and open to all.

In her performances, Israeli Deaf poet Tami Assouline rejects the hegemony of the spoken word and describes her poetry as "a purely visual work of art—an expression of my movement and freedom in my own language.” Removed from the strictures of Hebrew, her creative work explores such themes as love, grief, and the sensuality of the body.  Tami will perform her poetry and will discuss, together with Dr. Marco Di Giulio, the history, memory, and identity of the Israeli Deaf community. Live captions will be available.

Marco Di Giulio is an associate professor of Hebrew language and literature at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. He has written on the vernacularization and standardization of Hebrew. He was a fellow at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford (UK), and his work has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including Jewish Social Studies, The Journal of Israeli History, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Modern Judaism, Hebrew Studies, History of Universities, and Annali d'Italianistica. Currently, he is completing a book manuscript on the history of disability in Israel. His most recent publication is "The Origins of Israeli Deaf Ethnicity," Jewish Social Studies  27.2 ( 2022): 144-182.

Tami Assouline is a multidisciplinary deaf creator—in movement, dance and poetry. She is a sign language teacher and the daughter of a deaf family. She has written three books of poetry, the most recent of these in deaf syntax, and is working on a fourth book. She created a short film that deals with dance. Her ambition is to release a video and a bilingual book.

See other upcoming Schusterman Center programs at www.brandeis.edu/israel-center/events