Marco Di Giulio Associate Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature
Biography
Dr. Marco Di Giulio received his PhD from the University of Florence, and did graduate work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His scholarship to date has investigated the ways in which the Hebrew language shaped Jewish national self-understandings, tracing connections between shifting intellectual movements and models of education, especially in nineteenth-century Italian Judaism. His most recent research project focuses on what it meant to be disabled in the Jewish society of pre-state Israel that was shaped by the emphatically physical Zionist concern to cultivate healthy settlers. He is particularly interested in how Jewish national institutions responded to the need to educate children with disabilities.
Dr. Di Giulio received fellowships from the University of Oxford (UK) and University of Pennsylvania, and his work has appeared in journals such as Jewish Social Studies, The Journal of Israeli History, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Modern Judaism, Hebrew Studies, History of Universities, Annali di Italianistica and other scholarly venues.
Education
PhD University of Florence
Research
Disability history, history of the Hebrew language, Israel studies
Grants, Fellowships and Scholarly Appointments
2022 Travel Grant, Association for Israel Studies, 38th annual conference, Bar-Ilan
University, June 27-29
2014-2015 Adjunct Fellow, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies,
University of Pennsylvania, "New Perspectives on the Origins, Context, and Diffusion
of the Academic Study of Judaism"
2013-2014 Dorset Fellow, Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies "On the Word
of a Jew: Oaths, Testimonies, and the Nature of Trust," Oxford Centre for Hebrew and
Jewish Studies, Yarnton Manor, Oxford
2011 Jacob Kabakoff Memorial Grant (travel grant)
2010 Summer Institute for Israel Studies, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
at Brandeis University
Publications
Publications
Disability in Israel (1920-1960) (under advance contract, McGill-Queen's University
Press)
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
“Contesting the Politics of British Prosthetic Care: Pain, Nativeness, and the Plight of Palestinian Jewish Amputees in WWII,” in eds. Sara Scalenghe and Beverly Tsacoyianis, Disability History in the Middle East (under contract with Bloomsbury Press). In preparation, solicited
"Motherhood, Mental Incompetence, and the Denial of Reproductive Autonomy in the Early Years of Israeli Statehood." Journal of Social History (forthcoming)
“Killing out of Compassion: Disability, Care, and the Value of Life in the Early Decades of Israeli Statehood,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2023). DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2023.2227611 [printed version forthcoming]
"The Origins of Israeli Deaf Ethnicity." Jewish Social Studies 27.2 (spring-summer 2022): 144-182
"Negotiations of Jewish Memory: Rome's Holocaust Museum and the Progetto Talmud Babilonese." Annali d'Italianistica 36 (2018): 415-440.
"Protecting the Jewish Throat: Hebrew Accent and Hygiene in the Yishuv," The Journal of Israeli History 35.2 (2016): 1-23.
"Scholarship, Politics, and Jewish Identity in Italian Post-Unification Academia," History of Universities 29.1 (2016): 88-111.
"S. D. Luzzatto's Program for Restoring Jewish Leadership in Hebrew Studies," Jewish Quarterly Review 105.3 (summer 2015): 340-366.
"Resisting Modernity: Jewish Translations of Scripture and Rabbinic Literature in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Italy," Modern Judaism 35.2 (May 2015): 203-232.
"There is no time more pleasurable than when I converse in the sacred language. A plan for the revival of spoken Hebrew in 19th-Century Italy," Hebrew Studies 53 (2012): 203-230.
“Mitigating Devices in Biblical Hebrew,” Kleine Untersuchungen zur Sprache des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt 8/9 (2008): 33-62.
“Pragmatics as a Theoretical Framework for Interpreting Ancient Hebrew Texts: An Appraisal,” Materia Giudaica XII/1-2 (2007): 51-61
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
“Exclamations in Modern Hebrew,” “Italy, Hebrew in (Modern Period),” “Discourse markers in Biblical Hebrew,” “Pragmatic studies in Biblical Hebrew,” “Exclamations in Biblical Hebrew” in G. Khan (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, Leiden (2013)
ARTICLES IN PROCEEDINGS
“Carte ebraiche nell’Archivio della Biblioteca dell’Accademia dei Lincei e Corsiniana: un taccuino giovanile di G.I. Ascoli” (“Hebrew Papers in the Archive of the Library of the Lyncean Academy: An Early Notebook by G.I. Ascoli”), in Carla Marcato e Federico Vicario (eds.), Il pensiero di Graziadio Isaia Ascoli a cent’anni dalla scomparsa, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Gorizia-Udine, 3-5 maggio, 2007, Udine, Società Filologica Friulana, 2010, pp. 73-98 (in Italian)
Presentations
Presentations
2022 "The Deaf Community in Israel: Israeli Dancer and Poet Tami Assouline in Conversation with Professor Marco Di Giulio." Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University (8 November).
2017 “Explaining Modernization of Jews in Nineteenth Century Italy.” Center for European Studies, Harvard University; Jews in Modern Europe Study Group.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
2023 “Taking the Wheel: Automobility and the Israeli Disabled Veteran Community.” AJS 55th Annual Conference (17–19 December). Paper accepted
2023 “Contesting the Politics of British Prosthetic Care: Pain, Nativeness, and the Plight of Palestinian Jewish Amputees in WWII.” 39th Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies (26–28 June)
2023 “Contesting the Politics of British Prosthetic Care: Pain, Nativeness, and the Plight of Palestinian Jewish Amputees in WWII.” Online Conference on Histories of Disability and Emotions, Leuven Centre for Health Humanities, organizers Pieter Verstraete, Sara Scalenghe, and Ninon Dubourg (13–15 June)
2022 "The Will to Work: Disabled War Veterans and the Israeli Prosthetics Industry." Association for Jewish Studies 54th Annual Conference, Boston (18–20 December)
2021 “'Mental Retardation', Parent Advocacy, and the Need for Undisrupted Domesticity in the Early Decades of Israeli Statehood." Association for Jewish Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago (19–21 December)
2018 "What Does a Healthy Zionist Look Like? Medical Rationing and the Redefinition of Disability in the Yishuv." Association for Jewish Studies 50th Annual Conference, Boston (16–18 December)
2017 “The Society for the Hard of Hearing and the Beginnings of Deaf Activism in the Yishuv.” Association for Jewish Studies 49th Annual Conference, Washington, DC (17–19 December)
2016 “Hebrew Language and Hygiene in the Yishuv.” 32nd Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies (18-20 June)
2014 Roundtable “On the Word of a Jew: The Problem of Trust in Jewish History.” Association for Jewish Studies 46th Annual Conference", Baltimore, MD (14–16 December)
2014 “Jewish Academics and Cultural Politics in Post-Unification Italy.” 10th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, Paris (20–24 July)
2013 "Trustworthy Educators in a New Nation: Jewish Academics in Post-Unification Italy." Oriental Institue, Oxford University, UK (4 December)
2012 "Reclaiming Hebrew Studies: Language and National Pride in Ninenteenth-Century Italian Scholarship." American Association for Italian Studies 32nd Annual Conference, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC (3-5 May)
2011 "National Implications in the Linguistic Theory of S. D. Luzzatto." AJS 43rd annual conference, Washington, DC (18-20 December)
2011 "Instructing youngsters to speak the pure tongue today in an easy and pleasurable manner: Hebrew schoolbooks in 19th-Century Italy." NAPH Conference on Hebrew Language, Literature and Culture, University of Maryland in College Park (28-30 June)
2011 “When Dialog Met Grammar: Hebrew Learning in 19th-century Italy.” The American Association for Italian Studies. XXXI Conference, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh (7-9 April)
2011 "Hebrew Revivalist Tendencies in 19th Century Italy," Forging Linguistic Identities, Towson University, Towson (17-19 March)
2010“’Conversing in the sacred language is pleasurable to me …’ A 19th-Century Grammar and the Italian Contribution to the Hebrew Language Revival.” AJS 42nd annual conference, Boston (19-21 December)
2009 “Silent Objects in Modern Hebrew.” 2009 NAPH International Conference on Hebrew Language, Literature and Culture, University College London, London (7-9 July)
2008 “Recent Grammatical Developments in Spoken Israeli Hebrew.” XXII convegno internazionale dell’AISG, Ravenna, Italy (29 May)
2008 “Degrees of Explicitness in Spoken Israeli Hebrew.” VIII International Afro-Asiatic Congress, University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy (11–13 September)
Professional Service
Disability History Association, Board of Directors (2023–2025)
Co-chair of the Division on Disability Studies of the Association for Jewish Studies (2023-)
Manuscript reviewer: Journal of Israeli History, AJS Review, Journal of Jewish Identities,
Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems (ANVUR)