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Address Prof. Rakefet Sela-Sheffy Unit of Culture Research Tel Aviv University Gilman, Box 50 Tel Aviv 69978, ISRAEL Tel. +972-3-640-9548 Fax: +972-3-640-7909 E-mail: Websites: |
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy
Short Biographical Description
Rakefet Sela-Sheffy, born 1954 in Israel, Ph.D. (1993) from Tel Aviv University, is Associate
Professor at the Unit of Culture Research, Faculty of
Humanities, Tel-Aviv University. She was Head
of the Leslie and Shirley School of Cultural Studies (2005-2009(, and is currently Chairperson of the
Unit of Culture Research. Her main fields are identity processes (with special
accent on professional identity, identity and environmentalism), talk and
self-representations, cultural models (with special accent on emotions as
cultural models), culture contacts and culture retention, translation,
pre-State and contemporary Israeli culture. She has co-edited Identity and Status in the
Translational Professions (with Miriam Shlesinger,
2011) and Culture
Contacts and the Making of Cultures: Papers in Homage to Itamar Even-Zohar
(with Gideon Toury, 2011). Her publications deal
with Israeli identity in everyday talk; Culture retention by high-status
immigrants – the case of German immigrants and the formation of bourgeois
culture in British-ruled Palestine; Identity processes in semi-professional
occupations and belated professionalization – the case of translators; and
grassroots environmentalism and regional history – in early Israeli-State
period. Her current research projects are: [1] Cultural models of anger
– an interdisciplinary study, Culture and Brain research (Templeton Foundation,
Chicago University 2010-2012, together with Talma Hendler and Judd Neeman, TAU);
[2] Status strategies and the construction of occupational identity of
semi-professional groups – Israeli translators as a case in point
(ISF-The Israel Academy of Sciences 2006-2009, together with Prof. Miriam Shlesinger, Bar-Ilan University).
[3] Grassroots environmentalism and identity – Western Galilee 1948—1964. She has previously published on the notion of the canon
and processes of canon formation; the formation of literary fields and
repertoires – the case of late 18th century emergent modern German
culture and literature; the concept of the habitus and cultural models; and
on popular culture as manipulated by elite culture. Other past contributions
deal with specific case studies such as canonizing processes in the fields of
the modern popular song in America and Israel around the 1970's; and the role
of literary activity and the rise of a new intellectual elite in the making
of the modern German national culture during late 18th and early 19th
centuries. Between 1994 and 1999 she was a Lecturer (tenure track)
at the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Haifa University. She
has been a Visiting Scholar at the Herzog-August Bibliothek,Wolfenbüttel; the Max-Planck Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen; the Minda
de Gunzburg Center for European Studies,
Harvard University; the Literaturwissenschaftliches
Seminar, Hamburg University; the Department of Anthropology,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s; the Department of
Sociology, Harvard University; the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research,
Australian National University; the Center for Cultural Studies,
University of California, Santa Cruz, the Languages of Emotion Cluster,
Freie Universitat,
Berlin. She has been awarded international grants and research scholarships
such as the DAAD, Minerva, the Wolfson
Post-Doctoral Scholarship via The Israel Academy of Sciences, and the Humanities
Fellowship of the Rothschild Foundation. In 1996 she was awarded the Koret Fellowship for Young Faculty, Haifa University. Her
research project sponsored by The Israel Academy of Sciences are: "The
Cultural Disposition of Legal Agents and the Formation of the Legal Field in
the Israel Cultural System" (1994/5-1997/8); “Strategies of Image-Making
and Status Advancement of a Marginal Occupational Group: Translators and
Interpreters in Israel as a Case in Point” (2006-2009). |
