SAN DIEGO (Press Release) — The Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University recently announced a new slate of visiting Israeli professors who will teach at SDSU during the upcoming academic year.
They include Eran Feitelson, Moshe Zonder, Shuki Ben Naim, Luba Levin-Banchik, and Gilad Shteinberg.
Dr. Eran Feitelson
Over the decades, Israel has developed different solutions, from diversion of Sea of Galilee water, to becoming a leader in desalinization plants and the recycling of wastewater (Israel recycles 90% of its wastewater, nearly four times as much as the next most efficient country, Spain, at 20%).
Dr. Eran Feitelson has been a key participant on several national water-planning teams and committees for Israel and is currently chairing its National Parks and Nature Reserves Commission, having chaired it for ten years in the past. Dr. Feitelson, recipient of “Yekir Hatichnun” award (the highest award of the Israeli Planning Association), is a Professor in the Department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a founder and previous director of the Advanced School for Environmental Studies, former head of the Federmann School for Public Policy and Government and presently chairs the Department of Geography at Hebrew University. A PhD graduate of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, he has published over 100 articles in refereed journals and edited volumes on water policy issues, transport policy, environmental policy, and planning.
Dr. Feitelson will be teaching one course in the Geography Department in Fall 2019.
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Moshe Zonder and Shuki Ben Naim
In 2017, listing Fauda‘s first season among the year’s top ten foreign series, the New York Times wrote, “The grittiest, tightest, most lived-in thrillers come from Israel and ‘Fauda‘…is the current standard bearer.” The Atlantic’s Yasmeen Serhan wrote in her article, Watching Israeli TV’s Fauda as a Palestinian, “When the third season drops on Netflix next year, I’ll be watching.” The screenwriter of the entire, extraordinary first season which was purchased and distributed by Netflix exclusively as a Netflix Original, is Moshe Zonder. He is a well-established and experienced writer of screenplays for film and television who began his career as a journalist writing for one of Israel’s leading newspapers.
Currently one of the most prolific TV creators and screenwriters in Israel,Shuki Ben Naim, comes to his filmmaking career from the unusual background of yeshiva studies (center of Jewish religious learning) prior to attending film school. His work is informed by his background and deep familiarity with observant Judaism and its interaction and collision with every-day secular society and life in Israel, a country founded by secular Jews on land that has deep religious significance to observant Jews.
Among his works:
Zonder and Ben Naim will be team teaching a Screenwriting class in Fall 2019 in the English department.
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Media, War & Conflict. Dr. Levin-Banchik’s expertise also includes design, application and study of active learning in higher education. Her book, World Politics Simulations in a Global Information Age (University of Michigan Press, 2015), coauthored with Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Chanan Naveh, examines face-to-face and cyber simulations in social science courses. Her recent study on a simulation of an Israeli security crisis over Iranian Plane is forthcoming in the Journal of Political Science Education.
Dr. Levin-Banchik is a co-founder of the World Politics Simulation project. She has been recently elected as a member-at-large of active learning in international affairs (ALIAS) section of International Studies Association for the 2018-2019 years. Dr. Levin-Banchik will be teaching courses in the History and Political Science Departments.
Dr. Gilad Shteinberg
What were Middle East and Israel’s climate like in the biblical period? That is the question Dr. Gilad Shteinberg (PhD, University of Haifa) has dedicated his academic career to researching. Currently focused on projects involving human settlement during the biblical period along Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast,
Dr. Shteinberg will be teaching in the Anthropology Department in Spring 2020.
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Preceding provided by SDSU’s Jewish Studies Program