Roni Masel works on Hebrew and Yiddish literatures and studies them in the context of modern Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe, the history of reading and history of the book, and queer and postcolonial theory. Masel is currently completing a book manuscript titled Bad Readers: Misreading, Mistranslation, and Other Textual Malpractices in Hebrew and Yiddish, which explores Jewish literatures in Eastern Europe from the perspective of reading and para-literacy, nationalism and dissent. The book reflects on what it means to accuse someone of being a bad reader, how turning this accusation on its head can offer a liberating prospect, and how the long history of this accusation shaped modern Jewish textuality more broadly. A new project, tentatively titled “Yiddish Empires: Visions of Race and the Global in Modern Yiddish Culture,” considers works of literature and philology to examine a globalizing Yiddish culture in the twentieth century between Europe, North America, and South Africa.
Masel holds a Ph.D. from New York University and a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prior to teaching at Berkeley, Masel was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at Ben-Gurion University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Frankel Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Professor Masel is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for Jewish Studies, advising students pursuing a Designated Emphasis in Jewish Studies.
Office Hours:
Tuesdays 11:00-12:30, or by appointment
Articles
- “Skeletons in the Hebrew Closet: Isaac Leib Peretz’s and Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik’s Yiddish Translations of ‘In the City of Killing’,” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 39: 3 (2022), 341-384
- “Revival and Decay: On the Politics of Gothic Ambivalences in Modern Hebrew Literature,” in Middle Eastern Gothics: Literature, Spectral Modernities and the Restless Past ed. Karen Grumberg, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2022), 109-132
- “Who is a Yid?: Reading the Journal Der Yid beyond the Hebraist—Yiddishist Binary,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 20, no. 4 (2021): 361-383
- “Dreams of A Jewish Queen: A Literary Itinerary of National-Sexual Desires, from the Book of Esther to Aaron Zeitlin’s Esterke,” Studies in Yiddish 16: Women, Men and Books: Issues of Gender in Yiddish Discourse, Oxford: Legenda, 2019, 99-107
Select Media Engagements and Other Writings
- “Translation as Trespassing,” Frankel Institute Annual, 2022
- “How Jews Became Modern Readers,” a podcast episode with the series Frankely Judaic: Exploration in Jewish Studies, March 2021 (listen on Soundcloud or on Apple Podcasts)
- “Going Off Script: The Contradictory Pleasures of Unorthodox,” In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, June 2020 (ranked top most read piece in the journal's annual roundup!)