Posted in Baron Book Prize

2014 Baron Book Prize Winner: Lital Levy

2014 Baron Book Prize Winner: Lital Levy Posted on June 30, 2014

The Baron Book prize for 2014 was awarded to Lital Levy of Princeton University for Poetic Trespass: Writing Between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine (Princeton University Press). 

Poetic Trespass explores the fraught relationship of Arabic and Hebrew in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. Employing an eclectic methodology that combines close readings with critical theory, sociolinguistics, and intellectual history, Lital Levy shows how the cultural-political space produced through literary bilingualism, translation and the creative rewriting of Hebrew in dialogue with Arabic – which served as both model and foil for modern Hebrew Literature — disrupts the norms that define language, identity and belonging in the State of Israel and allows for the transgressive migration of ideas across political and cultural boundaries.

Honorable Mention is awarded to Julia Phillips Cohen of Vanderbilt University for Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford University Press).