We welcome author Ilana Blumberg as she shares her newest book, a memoir of her experiences in American and Israeli classrooms. She will speak about the challenges of living in a world with unequal opportunities for education, and reflect on ways that classroom experiences inspire students to grow and spark change.Ilana Blumberg is the author of Open Your Hand: Teaching as a Jew, Teaching as an American, and Houses of Study: a Jewish Woman among Books, winner of the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Jewish Literature and shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award in Women’s Studies and the Moment Magazine Prize for Emergent Writers. She publishes regularly in the field of Victorian studies and is the author of the scholarly monograph, Victorian Sacrifice: Ethics and Economics in Mid-Century England.
Ilana was educated in Jewish day schools, at Drisha Institute, and Midreshet Lindenbaum, and earned her BA in English, summa cum laude, at Barnard College. She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing and her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the Israel Science Foundation.
Ilana began her formal career in teaching at Beit Rabban in New York City. She has received awards for teaching excellence from the University of Pennsylvania and Michigan State University, where she taught for eleven years. Ilana currently directs the Shaindy Rudoff Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University where she is a Senior Lecturer in English.
Ilana lives with her family in Jerusalem.