Hana Wirth-Nesher’s research and publications are in the areas of the modern novel, urban literature, twentieth century American literature, Jewish American writing, and Yiddish studies. She is the author of City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel (Cambridge) and Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature (Princeton), the editor of What is Jewish Literature? (Jewish Publication Society), The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature (with Michael Kramer), New Essays on Call It Sleep (Cambridge), and most recently The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature. Her essays cover a wide range of authors, from Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce to Henry Roth, Israel Zangwill, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Sholem Aleichem.
Professor Wirth-Nesher has served as The Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States at Tel Aviv University, and as the Founding Director of the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture. She also served as the Chair of the Department of English and American Studies for eight years. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, the Frankel Institute at the University of Michigan, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and she has been Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Konstanz. She has been recognized for excellence in teaching by the rector and dean of the Humanities at TAU. Professor Wirth-Nesher earned her BA at the University of Pennsylvania and her MA and Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Her current research interests are on the cultural significance of representation of voice, sound, and speech in Jewish American writing, and multilingualism in modern American literature.