Adi Livny
Adi Livny
Office
Axinn 315
Email
alivny@middlebury.edu
Office Hours
Spring 2025: Monday and Wednesday 12:30-2:00 p.m. or by appointment.

Adi Livny is a historian of knowledge institutions, focusing on Israel and Mandatory Palestine. Her book manuscript, Settlers, Natives, and Empire: The Making of the Hebrew University, offers a revised origin story for the Hebrew University, established in 1925 in British Mandatory Palestine, tracing its transformation from a Jewish into an Israeli university. Drawing on materials in German, Hebrew, and Arabic from over ten archives in Israel and the United Kingdom, the book examines how the Hebrew University was shaped during its formative years as a result of the dynamic interactions between its predominantly Jewish-European faculty, the land’s Arab-Palestinian majority, and the British Empire. 

Livny’s new project, A Divide Apart: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on American Campuses, examines how American academic spaces emerged as an external front in the Israel-Palestine conflict as early as the 1950s. Her research has been featured in peer-reviewed journals such as Studies in Contemporary Jewry and Armed Forces & Society, as well as in public platforms like Haaretz.  

Livny earned her Ph.D. in Jewish History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a fellow at the Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. She held visiting fellowships at the Free University of Berlin and the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig. Her work has been supported by grants from the Israel Center of Research Excellence and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Her dissertation received an honorable mention for the Ben Halperin Award from the Association of Israel Studies and was recognized with the Nachum Ben-Eli Honig Prize and the Shlomo Glass and Fanny Balaban-Glass Foundation Prize.  

Courses Taught

Course Description

Zionism and the "Roads Not Taken" (1880-1948)
An Arab-Jewish binational state in Palestine was only one of the possible paths that the Zionist movement considered before taking the road that led to Israel’s 1948 establishment. Using various primary and secondary sources, we will critically engage with alternatives to the nation-state within the Zionist movement, unfolding key debates in its history. In the introductory units, we will position Zionism alongside other forms of Jewish nationalism, such as Simon Dubnow’s Diaspora Nationalism. We will then zoom in on post-World War I Zionism, discussing Imperial, anti-Imperial, pan-Asian, and binationalist-federalist alternatives to the Jewish nation-state program. In the concluding units, we will examine the processes by which these possibilities became marginalized, and the vision of a Jewish nation-state prevailed. (This course will be taught in a seminar-style format.)/

Terms Taught

Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025

Requirements

CMP, EUR, HIS

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Contemporary Israel: Society, Culture and Politics
In this course we will examine Israeli society and politics in a period of rapid and profound transformation. We begin with an introductory unit on Zionism, Palestinian nationalism and the history of the state. Subsequent units examine the social, cultural and political characteristics of Israel’s main population sectors (Middle Eastern, European, Russian and Ethiopian Jews and Palestinian citizens and residents of the state) and religious groupings (Muslims and Jews, including secular, traditional, national-religious and ultra-Orthodox). The final units examine intensifying political struggles that will shape the future of Israel and the region. Topics will include the role of religion in public life; civil rights, democracy and the courts; and West Bank settlements, occupation, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Terms Taught

Spring 2023

Requirements

MDE, SOC

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

The Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
When did the Jewish-Arab conflict begin? This survey course considers several different moments of its birth, such as the 1880s first wave of Zionist immigrants to Palestine, the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1948 and 1967 war and the 1964 establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other landmark moments. Based on secondary literature and primary textual and visual materials, we will engage with these competing periodizations and analyze various Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives they embody, considering broader themes such as the relations between the historian’s identity and the production of historical narratives, and the dynamic between facts, narratives and ideologies. 3 hrs. lect.

Terms Taught

Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025

Requirements

CMP, MDE, SOC

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Intercultural Jerusalem (1850-Present)
The course approaches the history of modern Jerusalem through the lens of intercultural encounters. Based on primary historical sources and secondary literature, we will examine how the relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews transformed as the city changed hands between the Ottomans, British, Jordanians, and Israelis. The introductory units will discuss the making of multi-cultural Jerusalem in the late Ottoman period and how, under British rule (1917-1948), its cosmopolitanism was abated by nationalism. We will then discuss its partition following the 1948 War and the emergence of “West Jerusalem” and “East Jerusalem.” Proceeding past 1967, we will examine if and to what extent Jerusalem became an integrated, united city under Israel sovereignty before concluding with a discussion of contemporary trends.

Terms Taught

Fall 2022, Spring 2024, Spring 2025

Requirements

CMP, HIS, MDE, PHL

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Independent Project
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Town & Gown: A History of Middlebury and Middlebury College
This course offers an overview of the history of Middlebury College by focusing on its relationship with its surrounding town. We will follow the history of these relations from Middlebury's 1800 establishment as the "town's College" and through subsequent transformations during the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on academic literature and various primary sources (archival documents, oral histories, visual images and more), we will revisit significant encounters between students, faculty, administrators and townspeople, examining how they impacted the college's and town's development. In the second part of the class, we will work together in the archives on the students' research projects, which we will make accessible to the public. This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities./

Terms Taught

Fall 2023, Fall 2024

Requirements

AMR, HIS

View in Course Catalog

Course Description

Jewish Midd: Histories of Jews and Judaism in Middlebury and Beyond
In this course, we will explore the social and cultural history of Jews and Judaism at Middlebury College and Vermont through two interconnected frameworks. The first framework employs the college's archives to analyze Middlebury as a case study of Jews in American higher education. We will review admission records and faculty minutes to outline institutional policies concerning Jewish students and faculty and explore the representation of Jews and Judaism in the curriculum and campus life. To provide a longitudinal perspective on contemporary issues, we will revisit campus debates concerning Israel/Palestine and antisemitism and examine their impact on inter-communal relations. The second framework centers on local history to study Vermont's Jewish communities, rural Jewish life, and movements such as the back-to-the-land movement, including visits to local archives and historical sites. This course is part of the Special Collections Collaborative Public Humanities Labs Initiative supported by the Axinn Center for the Humanities and Special Collections.

Terms Taught

Fall 2025

Requirements

AMR, HIS, SOC

View in Course Catalog