Israeli culture and art in the shadow of conflict
Israeli culture and art in the shadow of conflict
The Israeli art world’s response to the October 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing war in Gaza has been broad and multifaceted, yielding a surge of documentaries, films, television series, memoirs, fiction, and poetry that grapple with urgent contemporary concerns. This talk offers a snapshot of this cultural moment and a window into the evolving Israeli artistic landscape. We will begin with Yahav Winner’s short film The Boy (June 2023), set in the ‘Gaza envelope’—a haunting prelude to the events of October 7th. We will then turn to The Day After, a collection of short stories and visual works that imagine Israeli life in the wake of catastrophe. Both works explore themes of trauma and resilience—arguably the most prominent motifs in Israeli culture today. By tracing a range of artistic responses, this talk calls for a broader conversation about how Israeli culture processes and reframes collective experience in times of conflict, insecurity, and loss.
Dr. Vered Weiss is Assistant Professor at The Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, and is a core faculty member of The Michael and Elaine Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel at Michigan State University. She offers courses on Israeli culture, world literature, and cinema. Weiss is co-editor of Tracing Topographies: Revisiting the Concentration Camps Seventy Years after the Liberation of Auschwitz (Routledge, 2017) and Israeli Culture and Emergency Routine: Normalizing Stress (Lexington, 2024). Her current project explores the interplay between the location of marginalized characters and narrative empathy.