- Shirly Bahar teaches at Columbia University's School of Visual Arts. Shirly's first book, "Documentary Cinema in Isra... moreShirly Bahar teaches at Columbia University's School of Visual Arts. Shirly's first book, "Documentary Cinema in Israel/Palestine: Performance, The Body, and Home, was published with IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, July 2021. The book is based on her dissertation, originally written at New York University. Shirly is also the co-director of Tzedek Lab, a multiracial national network of practitioners in the Jewish social justice field. Since 2013, Shirly has been curating art shows and public community programs at New York University, the American Jewish Historical Society, and with Jewish Voice for Peace's NYC Chapter.edit
- Ella Shohatedit
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In this conversation, activist and filmmaker Mara Ahmed and scholar Shirly Bahar discuss a wide range of topics including the concept of performativity, solidarity across activist spaces, the relationship between trauma and language, and... more
In this conversation, activist and filmmaker Mara Ahmed and scholar Shirly Bahar discuss a wide range of topics including the concept of performativity, solidarity across activist spaces, the relationship between trauma and language, and the importance of reconceptualizing feelings of powerlessness as public and political so as to pursue change.
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"'Performance, the Body, the Home: Documentary Cinema in Israel-Palestine' is a major contribution to understanding 21st-century transnational film history. Looking at key documentary films by Arab and Mizrahi filmmakers living within the... more
"'Performance, the Body, the Home: Documentary Cinema in Israel-Palestine' is a major contribution to understanding 21st-century transnational film history. Looking at key documentary films by Arab and Mizrahi filmmakers living within the contested borders of Israel-Palestine, Shirly Bahar develops an argument for the vital place of documentary within contemporary politics and identities…In this profound study, we see how documentary and its critics mediate a uniquely performative and affective politics in Israel-Palestine, but also elsewhere and everywhere." (Paula Rabinowitz, University of Michigan)
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The television show Our Boys (HBO and Keshet Studios, 2019) revisits the July 2, 2014 kidnapping and murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old Palestinian boy from Shuafat, Jerusalem who was killed at the hands of three Jewish... more
The television show Our Boys (HBO and Keshet Studios, 2019) revisits the July 2, 2014 kidnapping and murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, the 16-year-old Palestinian boy from Shuafat, Jerusalem who was killed at the hands of three Jewish Israeli young men. An act of vengeance, the horrendous burning to death of Muhammad in the Jerusalem Forest took place right after the three kidnapped Jewish Israeli boys were found dead. In 'Our Boys: A Travelogue," I argue that the show grounds us in an experience of rethinking recent memory by reconsidering the events, asking us to pay close attention to what we are seeing, watching, hearing, and listening to, and to how we process and archive events through sensorial and affective absorption. As actual footage from the summer of 2014 blends with a fictional retelling, we are invited to look and closely experience powerful scenes of Palestinian and Mizrahi representation.
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"Leave Leave, Come Come: Arabesk Music, Mizrahi Music, and the 'There' of the Orient" explores the transnational encounters between Arabesk (Turkish-Arabic) and Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish) music. Told in the first person and from a queer... more
"Leave Leave, Come Come: Arabesk Music, Mizrahi Music, and the 'There' of the Orient" explores the transnational encounters between Arabesk (Turkish-Arabic) and Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish) music. Told in the first person and from a queer theoretical lens, this piece is about the transnational migrations of Arabesk music between today's Turkey and Israel since the 1970s, and the ways Arabesk songs and video performances distributed online assist in resurfacing Palestinian Ottoman memory, restoring non-national, interfaith, and multilingual exchanges in a modern nationalized Middle East.
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Featured at last November’s 13th Performa Biennial in New York, Einat Amir’s show Our Best Intentions comprised a 4-channeled video installation and a series of live participatory performances, alternately taking place in the same... more
Featured at last November’s 13th Performa Biennial in New York, Einat Amir’s show Our Best Intentions comprised a 4-channeled video installation and a series of live participatory performances, alternately taking place in the same exhibition space. The performances invited the audience to partake in theatric and therapeutic group sessions reminiscent of the ones displayed in the videos, thus turning the spectators to active performers. This review of Our Best Intentions explores how the participatory performances challenged the promise that the videos had inculcated. Watching the videos’ participants simulate and embody affective modes typically connotative with reality shows, we too yearn to behold, experience, and deliver, stardoms of sentimentality. Yet while the videos foregrounded a lucid yet complex, staged yet sincere, series of intimate disclosures, excavating the inner workings of the pains of others for our observing gazes, the participatory performances contested the merits and privileges of witnessing, weaving an event of multifaceted re-enactments and inter-activities.
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Far from new, correlative and comparative conceptualizations of Jewish and queer studies go back to one of queer theory’s first, and most influential, accounts: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). This article... more
Far from new, correlative and comparative conceptualizations of Jewish and queer studies go back to one of queer theory’s first, and most influential, accounts: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). This article revisits Sedgwick’s comparison between the gay and the Jewess’s acts of coming out to delicately destabilize her dichotomized differentiation of them. Unconditionally endorsing her condemnation of homophobia, I nevertheless shift my lens to center Esther’s, rather than gay men’s, narrated experience at the heart of the article. Closely and carefully examining Esther’s utterances and performances throughout the entire Book of Esther to trace a multifaceted understanding of her fictionalized figure, I conflate Sedgwick’s narration of Esther with more elaborate examinations of Esther’s literary construction. Capturing Esther’s fluid textuality, I contest the very assumption that one’s coming out as queer—within cultural as well as sexuality discourses—indicates her intention to define and/or confine herself along strict, systematic, and/or static taxonomies.
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Co-authored with Yasmin Sasson. Appeared in: Noa Hazzan and Sivan Shtang (eds.) Visual Culture in Israel: An Anthology, Hakibutz Hameuhad, Tel-Aviv 2017. Pages 370-404.
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Visual culture that depicts war is a familiar phenomenon in the Israeli cultural lexicon. Nevertheless, in the last decade, a significant aspect was added to it, as we are exposed to various documentary films performing confessions of... more
Visual culture that depicts war is a familiar phenomenon in the Israeli cultural lexicon. Nevertheless, in the last decade, a significant aspect was added to it, as we are exposed to various documentary films performing confessions of soldiers, both men and women, about their experiences in combat army service in the occupied territories and in wars. This article explores the cultural and ethical implications of this central cinematic phenomenon. Focusing on shame, blame, narration, and subjectivization the article looks at the juxtaposition of gender and national identity in its cinematic representation. Examining the aesthetics and ideologies of these films, this study unearths the attitudes towards Israeli acts and decisions that the cinematic medium depicts, and the main ethical issues that it raises.
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My essay about Mizrahi Jews, memory, and my Turkish family. The book is edited by Morgan Bassichis, Jay Saper, and Rachel Valinsky.
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"The Snap", my story featured in this collection, engages with Sara Ahmed's concept of "the snap", to recall a day in 1990 when my homeroom teacher politicized a biblical story to speak out about Palestine.
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I'm going to tell you a little story about my own Bat Mitzvah experience in 1991, growing up in Israel. I'm going to end with some thoughts in retrospect about the various relationships that we can imagine to the many lineages and... more
I'm going to tell you a little story about my own Bat Mitzvah experience in 1991, growing up in Israel. I'm going to end with some thoughts in retrospect about the various relationships that we can imagine to the many lineages and legacies of Hebrew that exist outside and beyond the Zionist created and dictated version of Modern Hebrew used, institutionalized, and weaponized in Israel.
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February 2021 marks 1 year since we last went to the movies. Remember going to the movies – that act of coming together as an audience, a short-term congregation of community, to share the experience of spectatorship for a couple of... more
February 2021 marks 1 year since we last went to the movies. Remember going to the movies – that act of coming together as an audience, a short-term congregation of community, to share the experience of spectatorship for a couple of hours. On this one year anniversary, I am reflecting back on that experience, trying to retrieve what we have taken with us, as well as left behind us, on our last night so far at the movie theater.
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This review article embarks on a journey through Einat Amir’s performance and video installation piece, Our Best Intentions, that was shown at the 13th Performa Biennial in New York in November 2013: in what follows, I narrate my... more
This review article embarks on a journey through Einat Amir’s performance and video installation piece, Our Best Intentions, that was shown at the 13th Performa Biennial in New York in November 2013: in what follows, I narrate my experience of this journey as a spectator and participating performer – a narration attempting to reflect on the intricacies embedded in these overlapping positions. Amir, who has showcased her work at Performa before (Ideal Viewer, Phase One, Phase Two, 2009), and whose work features in solo and group shows throughout Europe and the US, herself embarked on a journey leading in new directions with this piece.
Far from new, correlative and comparative conceptualizations of Jewish and queer studies go back to one of queer theory’s first, and most influential, accounts: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). This article... more
Far from new, correlative and comparative conceptualizations of Jewish and queer studies go back to one of queer theory’s first, and most influential, accounts: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990). This article revisits Sedgwick’s comparison between the gay and the Jewess’s acts of coming out to delicately destabilize her dichotomized differentiation of them. Unconditionally endorsing her condemnation of homophobia, I nevertheless shift my lens to center Esther’s, rather than gay men’s, narrated experience at the heart of the article. Closely and carefully examining Esther’s utterances and performances throughout the entire Book of Esther to trace a multifaceted understanding of her fictionalized figure, I conflate Sedgwick’s narration of Esther with more elaborate examinations of Esther’s literary construction. Capturing Esther’s fluid textuality, I contest the very assumption that one’s coming out as queer—within cultural as well as sexuality discourses—indicates her intention to define and/or confine herself along strict, systematic, and/or static taxonomies.