Arie M Dubnov
Biographic Data
| ID | 1046301 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arie M Dubnov |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arie M |
| FAMILY NAME | Dubnov |
| SIGNATURE | DUBNOV A M |
| AFFILIATIONS | George Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7901-5675 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Unsettled imperialists
The Three Languages of Right-Wing Zionist Radicalism
This article examines the radicalization of “maximalist” Revisionist Zionists from the late 1920s to the 1940s, aiming to fill a gap in the contextualization of the Zionist Right’s ideological historical development. Employing an intellectual historian’s approach, it reconstructs the political language and ideological borrowings of second-tier authors and activists, highlighting their eclectic incorporation of various strategies. At first, it foc…
Storytelling Matters
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi’s An Impossible Friendship offers a compelling group biography of five intellectuals and artists in Mandatory Jerusalem whose lives intersected before and after 1948. The review highlights Mejcher-Atassi’s narrative approach, which blends literary and social history to reconstruct a vibrant, ecumenical circle committed to art, dialogue, and cosmopolitan ideals amid rising national tensions. Drawing on personal archives and me…
The Three Rs of Post-war Internationalism
Are refugee ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ the same thing? This article investigates the mid-century emergence of these two key concepts in the context of the entangled histories of post-1945 displacement and resettlement in Palestine/Israel, which has long had the dubious distinction of serving as a central site of international experimentation vis-à-vis modern questions surrounding mass expulsion and the possibilities of return. Despite the deeply…
Speaking Cantonese
Since 2012, proposals for cantonization, federalism, and confederalism have gained renewed attention as potential frameworks for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The resurgence of federal ideas in contemporary Israeli political discourse warrants a closer examination of their historical trajectories in Palestine, especially in the context of British imperial federalism. The article goes back a century, to the ideas of Jewish Zionist t…
Professor of Apocalypse
The Toynbee Affair at 100
Functioning as “precedent” and “templates” for future transfers, the Greco-Turkish population exchange and the Lausanne Treaty) are undoubtedly events of world-historical significance. But they are also crucial in the genesis of the subfield of historical research we now call “World History”: they provided the backdrop against which Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) began sketching his magnum opus, A Study of History and developed the foundations…
Nahum Slouschz and the Birth of Hebraic Mediterraneità
Agnotology in Palestine/Israel
This essay, a product of a reflection and dialogue between a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli, revisits the so-called "Teddy Katz Affair," a heated debate that erupted first in 2000 but resurfaced recently due to a new documentary. The Affair was triggered by a newspaper article reporting about a master's thesis, which relied heavily on oral testimonies, that concluded that war crimes against Palestinians were committed during the 1948 War in the…
Introduction
Often regarded as the country’s leading intellectual, the Israeli novelist and political essayist Amos Oz (1939–2018) was fond of describing himself as using two different pens, the first used to write work of prose and fiction, and the other – to criticize the government and advocate for a political change. The idea behind this special issue is to revisit the two pens parable by bringing together scholars from various disciplines to assess Amos …
Partitions
Partition—the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states—is often presented as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In the twentieth century, at least three new political entities—the Irish Free State, the Dominions (later Republics) of India and Pakistan, and the State of Israel—emerged as results of partition. This volume offers the first collective history of the concept of partition…
On Vertical Alliances, ‘Perfidious Albion’ and the Security Paradigm
Revisiting the Balfour Declaration, this article offers a threefold argument: first, challenging those who read the Declaration as symbolizing a new dawn of Jewish political history, the article proposes an alternative reading that considers it as a continuation of familiar patterns of Jewish political behaviour based on the forging of ‘vertical alliances’. Second, it argues that this perspective led many Jews to treat the Declaration as an unsig…
D aniel K upfert H eller . Jabotinsky’s Children
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the history of Revisionist Zionism and the origins of the Israeli Right. There are two tensions animating this body of literature: it is divided, first, between those who study the “founding father” of Revisionist Zionism—the politician, playwright, author, and translator Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940)—and those who prefer to move beyond this cryptic, controversial individual and ident…
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Notes on the Zionist passage to India, or
This article provides an outline of an alternative narrative of the Zionist road to statehood by reading the parallel histories of partition and state-making in the British Raj in India and Mandatory Palestine/Israel in tandem. After reviewing some of the recent scholarship on the subject, the article demonstrates how the reconstruction of an analogical prism among the historical actors can contribute to the understanding of the roots of partitio…
The Missing Beat Generation
The singer-songwriter Arik Einstein (1939–2013) long ago secured his place in the Israeli cultural pantheon. Prolific and versatile, Einstein is often considered the singer who recorded the first Israeli rock album, importing sophisticated Anglo-American music to Israel. Soon thereafter, though, Einstein refashioned himself as a melancholic and nostalgic singer. Moving from musicology to cultural history, this article places Einstein’s musical ca…
Those new men of the sixties’
This essay examines the use and understanding of the term ‘nihilism’ in liberal discourse. It argues that this discourse originated in Ivan Turgenev's 1862 novel Fathers and Sons and developed in the series of commentaries on exegesis the anti-revolutionary novel received over time. The essay consists of three parts. After examining the context in which Turgenev wrote his novel, it discusses three historical moments that were central to the devel…
What is Jewish (If Anything) about Isaiah Berlin's Philosophy
This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin's political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and wha…
Zionism on the diasporic front
Anti-cosmopolitan liberalism
The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post-war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxon…
Priest or Jester? Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980) on history and intellectual engagement
This essay provides a general introduction to the special number on Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980). The essay sketches the outlines of Talmon's intellectual biography, beginning with his study of the origins of totalitarian democracy, moving through his analysis of nationalism and political messianism, and ending with his study of the ideological clash of the 20th century. The essay raises the question of whether Talmon should be seen as a thinker w…
A tale of trees and crooked timbers
This essay seeks to examine the history of the intellectual comradeship between J.L. Talmon and the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). The scholarly dialog between the two began in 1947, continued until Talmon's death in 1980, and is well documented in their private correspondence. I argue that there were two levels to this dialog: First, both Berlin and Talmon took part in the Totalitarianism disco…
Between Liberalism and Jewish Nationalism
This essay examines Isaiah Berlin's ambivalent relationship with the ideas and practices of Jewish nationalism and the ways in which this ambivalence shaped some of the key premises of his political thought. Drawing upon extensive archival research in his unpublished letters from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, this essay reconstructs Berlin's attempt to reconcile himself with the national idea. This attempt forced him to enrich his liberalism, …
Anti-cosmopolitan liberalism
The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post-war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxon…
Zionism on the diasporic front
A tale of trees and crooked timbers
This essay seeks to examine the history of the intellectual comradeship between J.L. Talmon and the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). The scholarly dialog between the two began in 1947, continued until Talmon's death in 1980, and is well documented in their private correspondence. I argue that there were two levels to this dialog: First, both Berlin and Talmon took part in the Totalitarianism disco…
The Missing Beat Generation
The singer-songwriter Arik Einstein (1939–2013) long ago secured his place in the Israeli cultural pantheon. Prolific and versatile, Einstein is often considered the singer who recorded the first Israeli rock album, importing sophisticated Anglo-American music to Israel. Soon thereafter, though, Einstein refashioned himself as a melancholic and nostalgic singer. Moving from musicology to cultural history, this article places Einstein’s musical ca…
The Three Rs of Post-war Internationalism
Are refugee ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ the same thing? This article investigates the mid-century emergence of these two key concepts in the context of the entangled histories of post-1945 displacement and resettlement in Palestine/Israel, which has long had the dubious distinction of serving as a central site of international experimentation vis-à-vis modern questions surrounding mass expulsion and the possibilities of return. Despite the deeply…
Notes on the Zionist passage to India, or
This article provides an outline of an alternative narrative of the Zionist road to statehood by reading the parallel histories of partition and state-making in the British Raj in India and Mandatory Palestine/Israel in tandem. After reviewing some of the recent scholarship on the subject, the article demonstrates how the reconstruction of an analogical prism among the historical actors can contribute to the understanding of the roots of partitio…
Between Liberalism and Jewish Nationalism
This essay examines Isaiah Berlin's ambivalent relationship with the ideas and practices of Jewish nationalism and the ways in which this ambivalence shaped some of the key premises of his political thought. Drawing upon extensive archival research in his unpublished letters from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, this essay reconstructs Berlin's attempt to reconcile himself with the national idea. This attempt forced him to enrich his liberalism, …
Priest or Jester? Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980) on history and intellectual engagement
This essay provides a general introduction to the special number on Jacob L. Talmon (1916–1980). The essay sketches the outlines of Talmon's intellectual biography, beginning with his study of the origins of totalitarian democracy, moving through his analysis of nationalism and political messianism, and ending with his study of the ideological clash of the 20th century. The essay raises the question of whether Talmon should be seen as a thinker w…
A tale of trees and crooked timbers
This essay seeks to examine the history of the intellectual comradeship between J.L. Talmon and the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). The scholarly dialog between the two began in 1947, continued until Talmon's death in 1980, and is well documented in their private correspondence. I argue that there were two levels to this dialog: First, both Berlin and Talmon took part in the Totalitarianism disco…
Anti-cosmopolitan liberalism
The debate between contemporary cosmopolitans and advocates of nationalism is hardly new. Nevertheless, much of it is based on the erroneous assumption that cosmopolitanism should be seen as an outgrowth of liberalism, and that both should be considered as the complete conceptual opposites of nationalism. In this article I focus on two of the post-war Jewish anglophile intellectuals who took part in this debate during the Cold War years: the Oxon…
Zionism on the diasporic front
What is Jewish (If Anything) about Isaiah Berlin's Philosophy
This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin's political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and wha…
Those new men of the sixties’
This essay examines the use and understanding of the term ‘nihilism’ in liberal discourse. It argues that this discourse originated in Ivan Turgenev's 1862 novel Fathers and Sons and developed in the series of commentaries on exegesis the anti-revolutionary novel received over time. The essay consists of three parts. After examining the context in which Turgenev wrote his novel, it discusses three historical moments that were central to the devel…
The Missing Beat Generation
The singer-songwriter Arik Einstein (1939–2013) long ago secured his place in the Israeli cultural pantheon. Prolific and versatile, Einstein is often considered the singer who recorded the first Israeli rock album, importing sophisticated Anglo-American music to Israel. Soon thereafter, though, Einstein refashioned himself as a melancholic and nostalgic singer. Moving from musicology to cultural history, this article places Einstein’s musical ca…
Notes on the Zionist passage to India, or
This article provides an outline of an alternative narrative of the Zionist road to statehood by reading the parallel histories of partition and state-making in the British Raj in India and Mandatory Palestine/Israel in tandem. After reviewing some of the recent scholarship on the subject, the article demonstrates how the reconstruction of an analogical prism among the historical actors can contribute to the understanding of the roots of partitio…
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Partitions
Partition—the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states—is often presented as a successful political "solution" to ethnic conflict. In the twentieth century, at least three new political entities—the Irish Free State, the Dominions (later Republics) of India and Pakistan, and the State of Israel—emerged as results of partition. This volume offers the first collective history of the concept of partition…
On Vertical Alliances, ‘Perfidious Albion’ and the Security Paradigm
Revisiting the Balfour Declaration, this article offers a threefold argument: first, challenging those who read the Declaration as symbolizing a new dawn of Jewish political history, the article proposes an alternative reading that considers it as a continuation of familiar patterns of Jewish political behaviour based on the forging of ‘vertical alliances’. Second, it argues that this perspective led many Jews to treat the Declaration as an unsig…
D aniel K upfert H eller . Jabotinsky’s Children
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the history of Revisionist Zionism and the origins of the Israeli Right. There are two tensions animating this body of literature: it is divided, first, between those who study the “founding father” of Revisionist Zionism—the politician, playwright, author, and translator Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880–1940)—and those who prefer to move beyond this cryptic, controversial individual and ident…
Introduction
Often regarded as the country’s leading intellectual, the Israeli novelist and political essayist Amos Oz (1939–2018) was fond of describing himself as using two different pens, the first used to write work of prose and fiction, and the other – to criticize the government and advocate for a political change. The idea behind this special issue is to revisit the two pens parable by bringing together scholars from various disciplines to assess Amos …
The Toynbee Affair at 100
Functioning as “precedent” and “templates” for future transfers, the Greco-Turkish population exchange and the Lausanne Treaty) are undoubtedly events of world-historical significance. But they are also crucial in the genesis of the subfield of historical research we now call “World History”: they provided the backdrop against which Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) began sketching his magnum opus, A Study of History and developed the foundations…
Nahum Slouschz and the Birth of Hebraic Mediterraneità
Agnotology in Palestine/Israel
This essay, a product of a reflection and dialogue between a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli, revisits the so-called "Teddy Katz Affair," a heated debate that erupted first in 2000 but resurfaced recently due to a new documentary. The Affair was triggered by a newspaper article reporting about a master's thesis, which relied heavily on oral testimonies, that concluded that war crimes against Palestinians were committed during the 1948 War in the…
The Three Languages of Right-Wing Zionist Radicalism
This article examines the radicalization of “maximalist” Revisionist Zionists from the late 1920s to the 1940s, aiming to fill a gap in the contextualization of the Zionist Right’s ideological historical development. Employing an intellectual historian’s approach, it reconstructs the political language and ideological borrowings of second-tier authors and activists, highlighting their eclectic incorporation of various strategies. At first, it foc…
Storytelling Matters
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi’s An Impossible Friendship offers a compelling group biography of five intellectuals and artists in Mandatory Jerusalem whose lives intersected before and after 1948. The review highlights Mejcher-Atassi’s narrative approach, which blends literary and social history to reconstruct a vibrant, ecumenical circle committed to art, dialogue, and cosmopolitan ideals amid rising national tensions. Drawing on personal archives and me…
The Three Rs of Post-war Internationalism
Are refugee ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ the same thing? This article investigates the mid-century emergence of these two key concepts in the context of the entangled histories of post-1945 displacement and resettlement in Palestine/Israel, which has long had the dubious distinction of serving as a central site of international experimentation vis-à-vis modern questions surrounding mass expulsion and the possibilities of return. Despite the deeply…
Speaking Cantonese
Since 2012, proposals for cantonization, federalism, and confederalism have gained renewed attention as potential frameworks for addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The resurgence of federal ideas in contemporary Israeli political discourse warrants a closer examination of their historical trajectories in Palestine, especially in the context of British imperial federalism. The article goes back a century, to the ideas of Jewish Zionist t…
Professor of Apocalypse
Unsettled imperialists
Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · History (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works)