Oded Nir

Faculty

Associate Professor of Hebrew

Queens Hall, Room 345E
Phone: 718-997-5572
oded.nir@qc.cuny.edu

Research

My research explores the relationship between culture and the historical development of capitalism. I focus in particular on the ways artistic form (in literature, film, and TV) allows us to perceive social tensions, in ways that are unavailable to other kinds of knowledge. My first book, Signatures of Struggles, demonstrates how the development of modern Hebrew literature can only be understood if one sees it in relation to the development of capitalism in Palestine and Israel.

I’ve published multiple edited volumes, on topics such as materialist approaches to Israeli and Jewish culture, Israel/Palestine, and the way different literatures around the world offer us critical glimpses into different parts of a single system, transnational capitalism.

Currently, I’m working on several projects. One is my next monograph, Israel as World Reduction, which explores the relationship between the spatial logic of contemporary Israeli film, and uneven economic development in Israel/Palestine. Another project is a series of articles on new Israeli science fiction, arguing that the genre has replaced Israeli national allegory, in allowing us to perceive the movement of history. I’m also preparing an edited special issue on speculative culture and counter-futurisms in the Middle East.

Editorial Work

I’m an Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed quarterly, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.

Teaching

Professor Nir’s teaches both introductory and advanced courses on Hebrew and Israeli literature and culture. Among these are Hebrew 150, an introduction to Hebrew literature in translation; Hebrew 356, a course on modern Hebrew literature; Hebrew 358, a course on contemporary Israeli TV and film; and Hebrew 190, on the representations of conflict in Israeli culture. Professor Nir’s teaching emphasize a multidisciplinary approach to the study of culture, highlighting the way in which cultural texts creatively think through social problems, providing perspectives and that remain invisible from non-artistic perspectives.

Sample Publications

Monographs:

Israel as World Reduction: Space and Capital on the Israeli Screen (in preparation)
Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction (SUNY Press, 2018)

Edited volumes:

Co-editor (with Christian Haines and Liam Kruger), Marxism, Form, and Futurity, forthcoming in Cultural Critique
Co-editor (with Brittany Murray), Impasse, Interregnum, and Transition, special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 124.1 (2025)
Co-editor (with Shai Ginsburg), Materialist Perspectives on Jewish Culture, special issue of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (2024)
Co-editor (with Emilio Sauri and Ericka Beckman), Peripheral Literatures and the History of Capitalism, special issue of Modern Fiction Studies 68.1 (2022)

Peer-reviewed journal articles:

“Collectivity Beyond National Allegory; or, The Rise of New Israeli Science Fiction” (forthcoming in Historical Materialism)
(co-written with Brittany Murray), “Autonomy of Art, Anxieties of Transition,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 124.1 (2025)
“Reading for Material: Our Boys and Foxtrot,” Shofar, 42.2 (2024)
“How to End an Ending? Moving beyond Crisis in Israeli Culture,” ASAP/J, 8.2 (2023)
“Finding Work in Israeli Fiction,” Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture, 40.1 (2022)
“World Reduction in Contemporary Israeli Film and TV,” Jewish Film and New Media, 9.1 (2021)
“A Short History of Zionist and Israeli Political Marxism,” Journal of Israeli History, 38.1 (2020)
“Fauda and Crisis,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 18.1 (2019)
“Utopian Tremors, or, the Enigmatic Restlessness of the Israeli Literary Soldier,” Criticism 60.3 (2018)