Academic interests: History of migration, migrating knowledge and professions, and their impact on cross-cultural encounters in the 20th century, especially in the Arab-Jewish context

Amit Levy is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Koebner Center’s project ‘German-Jewish Photo Albums, 1928–1948: Meaning and Agency in Inconceivable Times’, where he studies early Jewish return to Germany as reflected in private photography.

He earned his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2021; the book adaptation to his award-winning doctoral dissertation, A New Orient: From German Orientalism to Israeli Mizrahanut, will be published in 2023 by Magnes Press/Koebner-Minerva Center.
In his current project, Amit explores encounters of local and migrating knowledge in Jerusalem under the British Mandate. He also serves as the Managing Editor of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center’s Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, published by De Gruyter.

Publications

Books

• A New Orient: From German Orientalism to Israeli 'Mizraḥanut' (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2023) (forthcoming; Hebrew).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Rediscovering the Goldziher Legacy in Jerusalem: Religion, Language and History in the Making of a Hebrew University,” in: Hans-Jürgen Becker, Kinga Dévényi, Sebastian Günther and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Building Bridges. Ignaz Goldziher and His Correspondents: Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Islamic History and Civilization Series (Leiden: Brill, 2023) (forthcoming).
• (co-authored with Hanan Harif) “‘A Complete, Multifaceted Discipline’: The Debate over the History of Jews in Muslim Lands and its Teaching,” in: Uzi Rebhun and Yfaat Weiss (eds.), The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Volume V: The Nation State and Higher Education (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 2023) (forthcoming; Hebrew).
• “Conflicting German Orientalism: Zionist Arabists and Arab Scholars, 1926–1938,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2022) (appeared online).
• “The Archive as Storyteller: Refractions of German-Jewish Oriental Studies Migration in Personal Archives,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts / Dubnow Institute Yearbook XVII (2018), pp. 425–446.
•  “A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient,” Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 10.1 (September 2016), pp. 79–100.
• “'The Sheik': Understanding American Orientalism through Visual and Narrative Differences in Three Decades of Discussion,” Slil: Online Journal for History, Film and Television 10 (2016 Winter), pp. 39–57 (Hebrew).
• “‘Ma’alesh, Nistader’: Arabic in the Folklore of the Palmach during the 1940s,” Hayo Haya: Student History Journal 11 (2015), pp. 46–66 (Hebrew).

Articles in Academic Publications 

• “A Discipline in a Suitcase: The Scientific Nachlass of Josef Horovitz,” in Elisabeth Gallas, Anna Holzer-Kawalko, Caroline Jessen and Yfaat Weiss (eds.), Contested Heritage: Jewish Cultural Property after 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), pp. 117–127.
• “Der wissenschaftliche Nachlass von Josef Horovitz,” in: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Archives of German–Jewish Scholarship: Wissenstransfer und Staatsbildung im Mandatsgebiet Palästina und in Israel (2018) (limited copies).
• “Israel. Orientalist Collections at the National Library of Israel,” Geschichte der Germanistik 49/50 (2016), pp. 147–148.

Academic Articles in Catalogs, Magazines and Blogs 

• “German Heritage in Word Cards: The Concordance of Classical Arabic Poetry in Jerusalem”, Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut.
• “Envisioning a Hebrew University: Ignác Goldziher on the University in Jerusalem”, Mimeo: Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut.
• (co-authored with Tom Eshed) “Elyakim Gotthold Weil”, Ad Acta: The Hebrew University, Jewish Scholars, and the Exile from Europe (Exhibition pamphlet). The National Library of Israel, November–March 2018–2019.
• “‘There is a need for a native quality Arabic speaker’: Isaac Shamosh, the First Oriental Lecturer in the School of Oriental Studies, 1936–1937”, The Historical Archive of the Hebrew University Blog, Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center Website.

Book Reviews

• Eyal Clyne, Orientalism, Zionism and Academic Practice: Middle East and Islam Studies in Israeli Universities (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), in The New East 59 (2020), pp. 207–210 (Hebrew).