2024 Alumni

Elya (Zisl) PiazzaChloë (Zisl) Piazza 

Chloë (Zisl) Piazza, PhD in the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Department, with Designated Emphases in Jewish Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley 2024.

Their areas of study are Talmud and Yiddish literature, which they approach through a queer theoretical lens. Their research focuses on depictions of racial, sexual, and social difference in Jewish literature as a mechanism for both exploitation and solidarity in service of clarifying a Jewish self-concept. They received a 2018 Translation Fellowship from the Yiddish Book Center for a translation of Di Agune, an early Yiddish play by Maria Lerner, which will appear in an upcoming volume on women in Yiddish theatre from Syracuse University Press. When not in academic drag, they perform original queer Jewish gorelesque.

 Alexander UllmanAlexander Ullman

Alexander Ullman grauated with a PhD in English studying 20th century global Anglophone literature. He is particularly interested in how sound and ethnicity meet in 20th century literature of the African and Jewish diasporas, specifically through the uses of dialect, translation, and music. He has also written on Jewish writing ranging from medieval piyutim to the work of contemporary Israeli author David Grossman. Ullman is currently a Mellon Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in Saint Louis.

Oren YirmiyaOren Yirmiya

Postdoctoral Fellow, Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2025

Ph.D. Dept. of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, Designated Emphases: Jewish Studies, Critical Theory, UC Berkeley 2024

M.A. Hebrew Literature, Tal-Aviv University (summa cum laude, 2016)

B.A. Literature and Sociology, Tel-Aviv University (magna cum laude, 2014)

Oren’s work is focused on 20th century and contemporary Hebrew literature and culture in Mandatory Palestine and the state of Israel. Within this frame, Oren’s work engages with question of agency, personal and national, and its relation to the enjoyment of reading; questions regarding the use of lyrical aesthetics in Israeli poetry and politics; and possible alternative conceptualizations of Hebrew literature’s taxonomy of social groups, genres, and generations. Before joining UC Berkeley, Oren has taken parts in various Israeli social justice and peace organizations such as New Profile, Sheikh-Jarrah Solidarity and Amutat Alon.”

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