Caroline Kahlenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 3787254 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Caroline Kahlenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Caroline |
| FAMILY NAME | Kahlenberg |
| SIGNATURE | KAHLENBERG C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7324-5995 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Predicament of a Palestinian Hebraist, 1912-1979
This essay explores Palestinian Arab knowledge production on Zionism. It focuses on the life of Ribhi Kamal (1912-79), a Palestinian scholar of Semitic languages who grew up in Jerusalem and excelled in modern Hebrew. During the 1948 War, Kamal was exiled to Damascus, where he repurposed his expertise in the service of the Syrian state. Kamal became the host of Radio Damascus's Hebrew-language broadcast, a propaganda program that called on Jewish…
The Girl with a Bomb in Her Basket: Age, Race, and Jewish Terror on Trial in British Mandate Palestine
This article explores how age became racialized in the context of British Mandate Palestine (1917-48). Specifically, it charts European Zionist discourses about how Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews aged in different ways. These discourses, which I call "age talk," played an important role in the court case of Rachel Habshush Ohevet-Ami. In June 1939, Ohevet-Ami, a young Jewish woman of Yemeni and Moroccan descent, disguised herself as an "Arab" and att…
How the Locals Grew an Accent: The Sounds of Modern Hebrew in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine
Early twentieth-century Palestine was a noisy place. Urban streets echoed with the cries of hawkers, the songs of nationalists, and the whistles of trains announcing their arrival. Conversations in Arabic, Turkish, Yiddish, English, Ladino, French, Hebrew, and other languages reverberated in the soundscape. In this article, I explore how Palestine's residents made sense of what they heard, focusing on one type of sound in particular: Hebrew-langu…
Peddlers and the Policing of National Indifference in Palestine, 1920-1948
This article explores nationalism and consumption in British-mandate Palestine using a history-from-below approach. It focuses on Arab and Jewish peddlers who regularly crossed national, cultural, and geographic borders in order to conduct petty trade with customers. Colonial and nationalist actors worked hard to curb the ubiquitous presence of such peddlers for various reasons. First, British colonial officials regarded urban hawking as unhygien…
New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine
The “new Arab woman” of the early 20th century has received much recent scholarly attention. According to the middle- and upper-class ideal, this woman was expected to strengthen the nation by efficiently managing her household, educating her children, and contributing to social causes. Yet, we cannot fully understand the “new Arab woman” without studying the domestic workers who allowed this class to exist. Domestic workers carried out much of t…
Lebanon's Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested
Histories of Jews in the Middle East have received much recent scholarly attention. Some historians have sought to challenge a narrative of continuous Jewish oppression under Islamic rule, while others importantly have looked to “provincialize Zionism” in the histories of Jewish communities in the Arab world beyond Palestine.1Franck Salameh's new monograph, Lebanon's Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested, contributes to this growing field…
The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)
The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with an…
The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/Turkish Women's Bodies, 1890–1932
This article explores an overlooked aspect of American missionary modernisation efforts in the late Ottoman Empire: the attempted transformation of women's bodies. By the late nineteenth century, American missionary women and Ottoman government officials both viewed Ottoman women's bodies as a visible reflection of the empire's weaknesses, yet also as central to its survival and revival. The transformation of women's bodies from ‘uncontrolled’ to…
New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine
The “new Arab woman” of the early 20th century has received much recent scholarly attention. According to the middle- and upper-class ideal, this woman was expected to strengthen the nation by efficiently managing her household, educating her children, and contributing to social causes. Yet, we cannot fully understand the “new Arab woman” without studying the domestic workers who allowed this class to exist. Domestic workers carried out much of t…
The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)
The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with an…
The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/Turkish Women's Bodies, 1890–1932
This article explores an overlooked aspect of American missionary modernisation efforts in the late Ottoman Empire: the attempted transformation of women's bodies. By the late nineteenth century, American missionary women and Ottoman government officials both viewed Ottoman women's bodies as a visible reflection of the empire's weaknesses, yet also as central to its survival and revival. The transformation of women's bodies from ‘uncontrolled’ to…
The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/Turkish Women's Bodies, 1890–1932
This article explores an overlooked aspect of American missionary modernisation efforts in the late Ottoman Empire: the attempted transformation of women's bodies. By the late nineteenth century, American missionary women and Ottoman government officials both viewed Ottoman women's bodies as a visible reflection of the empire's weaknesses, yet also as central to its survival and revival. The transformation of women's bodies from ‘uncontrolled’ to…
Lebanon's Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested
Histories of Jews in the Middle East have received much recent scholarly attention. Some historians have sought to challenge a narrative of continuous Jewish oppression under Islamic rule, while others importantly have looked to “provincialize Zionism” in the histories of Jewish communities in the Arab world beyond Palestine.1Franck Salameh's new monograph, Lebanon's Jewish Community: Fragments of Lives Arrested, contributes to this growing field…
The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)
The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with an…
New Arab Maids: Female Domestic Work, “New Arab Women,” and National Memory in British Mandate Palestine
The “new Arab woman” of the early 20th century has received much recent scholarly attention. According to the middle- and upper-class ideal, this woman was expected to strengthen the nation by efficiently managing her household, educating her children, and contributing to social causes. Yet, we cannot fully understand the “new Arab woman” without studying the domestic workers who allowed this class to exist. Domestic workers carried out much of t…
Peddlers and the Policing of National Indifference in Palestine, 1920-1948
This article explores nationalism and consumption in British-mandate Palestine using a history-from-below approach. It focuses on Arab and Jewish peddlers who regularly crossed national, cultural, and geographic borders in order to conduct petty trade with customers. Colonial and nationalist actors worked hard to curb the ubiquitous presence of such peddlers for various reasons. First, British colonial officials regarded urban hawking as unhygien…
How the Locals Grew an Accent: The Sounds of Modern Hebrew in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine
Early twentieth-century Palestine was a noisy place. Urban streets echoed with the cries of hawkers, the songs of nationalists, and the whistles of trains announcing their arrival. Conversations in Arabic, Turkish, Yiddish, English, Ladino, French, Hebrew, and other languages reverberated in the soundscape. In this article, I explore how Palestine's residents made sense of what they heard, focusing on one type of sound in particular: Hebrew-langu…
The Predicament of a Palestinian Hebraist, 1912-1979
This essay explores Palestinian Arab knowledge production on Zionism. It focuses on the life of Ribhi Kamal (1912-79), a Palestinian scholar of Semitic languages who grew up in Jerusalem and excelled in modern Hebrew. During the 1948 War, Kamal was exiled to Damascus, where he repurposed his expertise in the service of the Syrian state. Kamal became the host of Radio Damascus's Hebrew-language broadcast, a propaganda program that called on Jewish…
The Girl with a Bomb in Her Basket: Age, Race, and Jewish Terror on Trial in British Mandate Palestine
This article explores how age became racialized in the context of British Mandate Palestine (1917-48). Specifically, it charts European Zionist discourses about how Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews aged in different ways. These discourses, which I call "age talk," played an important role in the court case of Rachel Habshush Ohevet-Ami. In June 1939, Ohevet-Ami, a young Jewish woman of Yemeni and Moroccan descent, disguised herself as an "Arab" and att…
Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (7 works) · History (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Ancient history (5 works) · History (5 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works)