CROWN FAMILY CENTER FOR JEWISH AND ISRAEL STUDIES

Maayan Hilel (Ph.D., Tel Aviv University, 2019) is an Associate Professor of Instruction in Jewish Studies and the Assistant Director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies. She is a historian of the modern Middle East, specializing in the cultural and social history of Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.

Her research focuses on the intersection of mass culture, intercommunal relations and transnational networks in the Middle East and beyond. Her first book project, The Politics of Pleasure: Leisure Culture and Everyday Life in Mandate Palestine (in preparation for Stanford University Press), examines the emergence of modern leisure culture; cafés, cinemas, beaches, cabarets, sports clubs and other entertainment spaces in the urban centers of Mandatory Palestine. Drawing on multilingual sources in Hebrew, Arabic, and English and underutilized archives, the book establishes leisure as a central realm through which ordinary Palestinians engaged with and contested ideas of modernity, forged national consciousness, negotiated gender and class boundaries, encountered the colonial state, and interacted with their Jewish counterparts. By investigating transnational movement of performers, artistes and cultural objects, the book also situates Mandatory Palestine within broader regional cultural networks, offering new insights into mass culture in the Middle East.

Dr. Hilel's next research project focuses on the history of children and childhood in late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine. Before joining the Crown Family Center, Dr. Hilel taught in the Department of History at the University of Limerick, Ireland. In addition to her academic work, she specializes in guiding bi-national groups on issues of conflict resolution.

Among her recent publications:

 ‘Screening Identity: Palestinian National Culture and Intercommunal Dynamics in Haifa's Cinematic Landscape.’ Palestine/Israel Review, October 2024.

‘Changing Texture of Childhood: Palestinian Children as New Leisure Consumers in Mandatory Haifa,’ British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, December 2019: 1-19.

Undergraduate Courses:

MENA [Middle East and North Africa] Jewry: History, Society, Culture

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - Competing Narratives

The Holocaust and Its Memory in Israel

Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Land of Israel, 1880-1948

Leisure and Popular Culture in 20th Century Palestine/Israel

Daily life in Israel/Palestine