About

Barbara Mann is the college’s inaugural Stephen H. Hoffman Professor of Modern Hebrew Language and Literature.  She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.  Prior to her arrival at CWRU, she taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, and in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

Dr. Mann’s research explores questions of space, memory and identity.  She has published three books — A Place in History: Tel Aviv and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space (Stanford UP, 2006), is the first cultural history of the city published in English; it describes the evolution of the city’s public sphere through literature, archives, architecture, and monuments.  Space and Place in Jewish Cultures (Rutgers UP, 2012) analyses the historical meaning of space in Jewish communities in relation to contemporary critical theory.  Dr. Mann’s third volume, The Object of Jewish Literature: A Material History (Yale UP, 2022) tells the history of modern Jewish writing through the lens of material culture.  She is currently working on a study of the role of the book as an object in postwar Jewish cultures.

Dr.  Mann’s teaching introduces students to canonical works from 19^th-20^th century modern Hebrew literature, as well as contemporary Israeli cultural expression.