Skip to main content

Bina Freiwald, PhD

Professor, English
Director, Humanities PhD Program, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC)
Member of Academic Council, Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies


Bina Freiwald, PhD
Email: bina.freiwald@concordia.ca
Website(s): View my bookshelf page
Availability: Please email for an appointment bina.freiwald@concordia.ca

Research and teaching interests

Critical theory; women’s writing; gender and sexuality; textual and visual auto/biographical practices & theorizations of subjectivity; nation and diaspora; Canadian literature; Israel/Palestine.

 
Recent Research Projects:
1. “The Diaspora’s Homeland(s): Identity and Belonging in Contemporary Jewish Canadian Writing.”

2. “Gender, Nation, and Self-Narration: The Construction of National and Diasporic Identities in Jewish Women’s Life Narratives in Palestine/ Israel and Canada 1880-1948.”

Education

BA, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
MA, McGill University
PhD, McGill University


Selected publications

1.     “Rethinking Nation, Homeland, Diaspora: One Self-Narrative at a Time.” The Jewish Diaspora as a Paradigm: Politics, Religion and Belonging. Ed. Nergis Canefe. Istanbul: Libra Press, 2014. 269-297.

2.     "'We're in this together': Brian Brett's Trauma Farm as Autoecography." New Directions in Canadian Studies. Ed.Stewart Gill and R.K. Dhawan. New Delhi: Vedanta Books, 2011.

3.    “’Qui est nous?’: Some Answers from the Bouchard-Taylor Commission’s Archive."Religion, Culture and the State –Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report.  Ed. Howard Adelman and Pierre Anctil. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2011: 69-85, 129-132.

4.    “Tradition, Individual Talent, and ‘a young woman/From backwoods New Brunswick’: Modernism and Elizabeth Brewster’s(Auto)Poetics of the Subject.” Wider Boundaries of Daring: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry. Ed. B. Godard and D.Brandt. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2009. 97-123.

5.     “Social Trauma and Serial Autobiography: Healing and Beyond.” Unfitting Stories: Narrative Approaches toDisease, Disability, and Trauma. Ed. V. Raoul, C. Canam, A. Henderson, C.Paterson. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2007. 227-235.

6.    "'The tongue of woman': The Language of the Self in Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush." Susanna Moodie. Roughing It in the Bush. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Michael Peterman. New York: Norton, 2007. 473-489.

7.    "Gender, Nation, and Self-Narration: Three Generations of Dayan Women in Palestine/Israel." Tracing the Autobiographical. Ed. M.Kadar, J. Perreault, S. Egan, L. Warley. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2005.165-188.

8.    "'Covering their familiar ways with another culture': Minnie Aodla Freeman's Life Among the Qallunaat and the Ethics of Subjectivity." Postmodernism and the Ethical Subject.Ed. B. Gabriel and S. Ilcan. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2004. 273-301.

9.    "Identity, Community, and Nation in Black Canadian Women's Autobiography." Identity, Community, Nation: Essays on Canadian Writing. Eds. C. Verduyn and D. Schaub. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2002. 34-54.

10.   "Translational and Trans/national Crossings: French-American Feminist Mis/Dis/Re-Connections."Works and Days 20 (Winter 2002):142-161.

11.  "Nation and Self-Narration: A View from Québec/Quebec." Canadian Literature 172 (Spring 2002): 17-38.

12.  "Becoming and Be/longing: Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw and My Gender Workbook." Biography 24.1 (Winter 2001): 35-56.

13.  "Cartographies of Be/longing: Dionne Brand's In Another Place, Not Here." Mapping Canadian Cultural Space. Ed. D.Schaub. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2000. 37-53.

14.   "Class, Subjectivity, Desire: Two Autobiographies." Resources for Feminist Research /Documentation sur la recherche feministe 25.3&4 (1997): 26-33.

15.  "The Subject and the Nation: Canadian and Israeli Women's Autobiographical Writing." Precarious Present/Promising Future? Ethnicity and Identities in Canadian Literature. Ed. D. Schaub, J. Kulyk Keefer, R. Sherwin. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1996. 10-31.

16.  "The Interpellated Subject Lies Back: Angeline Hango's Truthfully Yours." Essays on Canadian Writing 58 (Spring 1996): 36-59.

17.  "'Towards the uncanny edge of language': Gail Scott's Liminal Trajectories." Essays on Canadian Writing 54 (Winter 1994): 60-79.[The Gender Issue]

18.  "'This isn't one to be told/ in the third person': Wallace's Life-Stories." Open Letter 7:9 (1991): 112-133.

19.  "Tennyson's Princess: Is There a Text in This Woman?" English Studies in Canada 14.4  (1989): 459-477.

20.  "'Why do feminists do it?': Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Subject." Social Discourse/Discours Social  2.1&2(1989): 237-246.

21.  "Of Selfsame Desire: Patmore's Angel in the House." Texas Studies in Language and Literature 30.4 (1988): 538-561.

22.  "'The praise which men give women': Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and the Critics." The Dalhousie Review 66.3 (1987): 311-336.

23.  "Femininely Speaking: Anna Jameson's Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada." A Mazing Space: Writing Canadian Women Writing. Ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli. Edmonton: Longspoon & NeWest Presses, 1987: 61-73.

24.  "A Pliable Reality:Towards the Construction of a Nabokovian Narrative Model." The Canadian Journal of Research in Semiotics8.1&2 (1980-81): 111-121.


Participation activities

Recent conference papers

"Dreamscapes: The Representation of the Unconscious in Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Memoir Are You My Mother?” Images of Identity: International Symposium. University of Zurich: January 30-31, 2015.

"Seeking a Sustainable Diaspora-Israel Relation: Jonathan Garfinkel’s Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide and Erna Paris’s The Garden and the Gun.” The 31st Annual Meeting of the Association for Israel Studies. Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, Concordia University: June 1-3, 2015

“In and Out of the Promised Land: Jewish Women’s Autobiographical Writing Across the Homeland-Diaspora Divide.” International Association for Biography and Autobiography (IABA) Conference. Banff Centre, BC: May 29-June 1, 2014.

"Which Way Up? Representations of Aliya in Recent Jewish Canadian Writing.” 30thAnnual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies. Sde-Boker, Israel: June 23-25, 2014.

"The Diaspora Interrogates the Nation-State: Representations of Israel in Recent Jewish-Canadian Writing.” The 14thJerusalem Conference in Canadian Studies ‘Canada and Israel in a Changing World: New Trend and Directions. ‘ The Hebrew University, Jerusalem: May 20-23, 2013.

"Gender and the Making of a Jewish Homeland.” 29thAnnual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies. UCLA, Los Angeles: June24-26, 2013. 

 

"Israel viewed through Israeli/Canadian Eyes: Edeet Ravel’s Tel Aviv Trilogy." 28thAnnual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies, ‘Multifaceted Israel in a Global Perspective.’ University of Haifa, Israel: June 25-27, 2012.

"'We're in this together’: Brian Brett's Trauma Farm as Autoecography.” 
13th Biennial Jerusalem Conference in Canadian Studies. Jerusalem: Israel Association for Canadian Studies and the Halbert Centre for Canadian Studies, the Hebrew University: June 28-July 1, 2010.





Back to top

© Concordia University