Nili Gold is Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. She published her fourth book, To Walk the Inner Streets, a Hebrew collection of articles on Yoel Hoffmann (coauthored with Yigal Schwartz), in 2024. Her third book, Haifa: City of Steps (University Press of New England) appeared in the fall of 2017 and Haifa My Love, an original Hebrew version of the book in late 2018. It weaves together the architecture, cultural history, and literature of Haifa. In 2019, she lectured internationally on this book and in the spring of that year, taught a course on the city and led her class through Haifa as part of Penn’s Global Seminar program. Her book Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet (UPNE, 2008), which is her second book on the poet, appeared in Hebrew translation in 2019 and a new translation into Chinese is now forthcoming. Her first book on Amichai, Not Like a Cypress, appeared in Hebrew in 1994 (Schocken). Professor Gold was the cofounder, in 2010, of the Middle East Film Festival at Penn and continues to serve on its committee. In 2023, Gold was among the founding members of a nonprofit organization dedicated to the legacy of the Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld. She has published extensively on authors including Lea Goldberg, Dahlia Ravikovitch, Yehudit Katzir, and Benjamin Shvili. She has several recent publications (in Hebrew and in English), including, in the summer of 2024, an article in Jewish Quarterly Review presenting new biographical findings on Amichai.
Israeli literature and film in translation:
- Fantasy, Dreams, and Madness
- The Image of Childhood
- The Image of the City
- Voices of Israel
Hebrew seminars:
- Autobiography in Modern Hebrew Literature
- The Giants of Modern Hebrew Literature
- The First Israelis
Other:
- Modern Middle Eastern Literatures in Translation (faculty coordinator)
Lo kabrosh: gilgule imagim ve-tavniyot be-shirat Yehuda Amichai (Not like a cypress: transformations of images and structures in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai), (Schocken, 1994), [in Hebrew].
“Introduction” and “Afterword: Rereading And This is the Light, Lea Goldberg's Only Novel” in Lea Goldberg, And This is the Light, trans. Barbara Harshav (Jerusalem: Toby Press, 2011).
“Reading The Heart’s Library: Benyamin Shvili’s Travelogues and their Roots in Hebrew Literature,” in Sprachheimaten und Grenzgänge: Festschrift für Anat Feinberg (Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2022).
“The Abandoned Girl on the Mountain,” in ‘Kitmei or’: 50 shnot bikoret u-mehkar al yetzirata shel Dahlia Ravikovitch, (‘Sparks of light’: essays about Dahlia Ravikovitch’s oeuvre), eds. H. Tsamir and T. S. Hess, (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 2011), [in Hebrew].
“Yoel Hoffmann’s Curriculum Vitae and Japanese Death Poems as Keys to Reading his Work,” CISMOR Conference on Jewish Studies, Doshisha University, Japan, Vol. 9 (2017).
“'Listening to Her': The Betrayal of the Mother Tongue in the Works of Hoffmann, Zach, Amichai and Pagis,” Mikan, Issue 12 (November 2012) [in Hebrew].
“To Walk on the ‘Inner Streets’: Yoel Hoffmann’s Ephraim,” On Liminality, special issue of Criticism & Interpretation: Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Culture, Vol. 43, Spring 2010 [in Hebrew].
“‘And the Migration of My Parents Has Not Subsided in Me’: Yehuda Amichai,” Middle Eastern Literatures: Incorporating EdebiYat, Vol. 8, no. 2 (July 2005).
“Bernhard's Journey: The Challenges of Yoel Hoffmann's Writing,” Jewish Studies Quarterly, No. 1 (1994).
“Mysticism and Messiahs in the Poetry of Binyamin Shvili,” Religion and Religiosity in Modern Jewish and Islamic Literatures, eds. G. Abramson and H. Kilpatrick (London: Routledge, 2005).
