Adia Mendelson Maoz is a professor of Israeli literature and culture in the Department of Literature, Language, and Arts at the Open University of Israel. She is the chair of the MA program in cultural studies and a co-chief editor of Israel Studies Review (the journal of the AIS – Association for Israel Studies). Mendelson Maoz investigates the multifaceted relationships between literature, ethics, politics, and culture, mainly in the context of Hebrew literature and Israeli culture. Her recent books include Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives (Purdue UP, 2014); Borders, Territories, and Ethics: Hebrew Literature in the Shadow of the Intifada (Purdue UP, 2018); and her Hebrew books Territories and Borders in the Shadow of the Intifada: Ethical Reading of Hebrew Literature 1987-2007 (Magnes Press, 2021); Center or Periphery: Identity Discourse in Israeli Literature (Open University Press, 2021). Her 2025 book, Yoram Kaniuk: Not Quite a Biography, is the recipient of the Bahat Award, Haifa University.
Mendelson Maoz began her research in digital humanities through her work on Yoram Kaniuk's literary estate, in which she explored, together with Nitzan Gado and Sinai Rusinek, the subject of dogs and other animals in Kaniuk's writing. In 2020, she was awarded (together with Dr. Avi Shmidman, Bar-Ilan University) a grant from the Ministry of Science in the field of digital humanities for the project "Computational Stylistic Profiles for the Study of Modern Hebrew Fiction." This project employed computational stylometry as a tool for distant reading, offering a new approach to the analysis of literary texts and to the construction of stylistic profiles of various authors. The project subsequently evolved into work on a digital corpus of Hebrew literature, which currently comprises over 1,500 texts. Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, Weizmann Institute, joined the team in 2023. She is currently working with Dr. Yiftach Ashkenazi on a project devoted to mapping and analyzing animals in Hebrew prose based on the digital corpus. The project includes a newly developed digital tool for identifying animals and their roles.
Selected Publications:
Territories and Borders in the Shadow of the Intifada: Ethical Reading of Hebrew Literature 1987-2007 , Magnes Press 2021.
Center or Periphery: Identity Discourse in Israeli Literature,
Open University Press, 2021.
Borders, Territories, and Ethics: Hebrew Literature in the Shadow of the Intifada, Purdue UP, 2018.
Multiculturalism in Israel – Literary Perspectives, Purdue UP, 2018.