Areas of interest
- Feminist Theory
- Queer Theory
- Transgender Studies.
- Literary and Film Theory.
- Gilles Deleuze.
- Michel Foucault
- Posthumanism and Human-Animal Studies.
Nir Kedem is assistant professor of cultural studies, head of the Department of Cultural Studies, Creation and Production at Sapir Academic College. His work employs diverse scholarly strands of critical theory, particularly feminist and queer thought and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, to rethink political and ethical impasses in gender and sexuality studies, as well as to offer new readings in literary and cinematic texts and cultural phenomena.
Kedem is currently working on two scholarly monographs: one in English, titled A Deleuzian Critique of Queer Thought: Overcoming Sexuality (to be published by Edinburgh University Press); and another in Hebrew, tentatively titled Untimely Queer: Deleuze and Cinema beyond Desire. Although independent from one another, the two monographs together comprise a single critical project that systematically employs Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical method and political pragmatics in order to offer a total reconstruction of “queer” as a radical concept for thought, action and analysis. To this end, I use Deleuze’s form of immanent critique to rethink and articulate anew the philosophical and geopolitical conditions for the emergence of queer theory (in A Deleuzian Critique) and of New Queer Cinema [NQC] (in Untimely Queer) in the United States, as well as to evaluate both queer theory’s and NQC’s critical potential to transform our ways of thinking, creating and acting in today’s posthumanist societies.
His articles on Deleuzian strategies of reading and queer translation are forthcoming in the journals Poetics Today and Symplokē.
2012-14: Nathan Rotenstreich Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Students in the Humanities, the Planning and Budgeting Committee, the Council for Higher Education of Israel.
2009-11: Merit scholarship, The Lesley and Shirley Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University.
2009: Pozis Merit Award, The Lesley and Shirley Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University.
2008-9: Merit scholarship, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.
2007: Young Research Fellow, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University.
Kedem, Nir. A Deleuzian Critique of Queer Thought: Overcoming Sexuality
“Plateaus” book series for Edinburgh University Press. Series Editors: Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong, Australia, and Claire Colebrook, Pennsylvania State University, USA
[under contract].
Kedem, Nir. Untimely Queer: Gilles Deleuze and Cinema beyond Desire
“Depth of Field” book series in Film Studies for Am Oved Press. Series editor: Raz Yosef, Tel Aviv University [proposal officially accepted].
Kedem, Nir. “Reading for Vital Symptoms: Deleuze, Literary Theory, and the Case of David Grossman.” Forthcoming in Poetics Today, vol. 40 (2019).
Kedem, Nir. “What is Queer Translation?” Forthcoming in Symplokē: A Journal for the Intermingling of Literary, Cultural and Theoretical Scholarship, vol. 26, no. 1-2 (December 2018).
Kedem, Nir. “Prophetism and the Problem of Betrayal.” Deleuze Studies 5. supplement (2011): 1-6.
Kedem, Nir. “Schizoanalysis and the Problem of Queer-Feminist Alliances.” Forthcoming in Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Feminism: Alliances and Allies. Eds. Janae Sholtz and Cheri Carr. London: Bloomsbury (Spring 2019).
Kedem, Nir, ed. Deleuzian Futures. Special Issue of Deleuze Studies 5. supplement (2011): 1-147.
From English
Adams, Carol J. “The Sexual Politics of Meat.” The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory.” 20th Anniversary ed. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. 47-63. In The Post-Human Era, edited by Yochai Ataria and Amichai Shalev. Haifa: Pardes Academic Publishing, 2016. 117-138.
Jacobs, Carol. “Playing Jane Campion’s Piano: Politically.” MLN 109.5 (1994): 757-785. In Mikan: Journal of Israeli and Jewish Literature and Culture 17 (2017): 414-442.
From French
Darrieussecq, Marie. “Mon mot préféré.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 16.5 (2012): 725. In The Post-Human Era, edited by Yochai Ataria and Amichai Shalev. Haifa: Pardes Academic Publishing, 2016. 357-358.
2017 “Queer Theory’s Image of Thought: A Deleuzian Critique.” Taking Flight—Assembling, Becoming, Queering: 10th International Deleuze Studies Conference, Wilfrid Laurier University and Seneca College, Toronto, Canada, June 19-21.
2017 “Pour ainsi dire: Translating the Literary Procedure, Queerly.” Gender and Genre in Translation, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, April 27-28.
2016 “Philosophically Queer: The Virtual Life of a Concept.” Virtuality, Becoming and Life: Deleuze Studies Conference. Department of Philosophy, Communication and Visual Arts of University of Roma Tre, Italy, July 11-13.
2015 “The Politics of Intimate Grammar: A Literary Symptomatology of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The Dark Precursor: International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research, The Orpheus Research Centre in Music, Ghent, Belgium, November 9-11.
2015 “Time, Reading, and Resistance: Reading Grossman with Deleuze.” Annual Lectures Series in Memory of Prof. Joseph Haefrati, The Department of Literature, Tel Aviv University, June 16 [Hebrew].
2014 “The Queer Activist Machine and the Politics of Space.” Models, Machines and Memories: 7th International Deleuze Studies Conference. Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, July 14-16.
2013 “The Smooth Space of Queer Resistance.” The Territory In-Between: 6th International Deleuze Studies Conference, The Centre for Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal, July 8-10.
2012 “Queer Sensation.” Deterritorializing Deleuze: 5th International Deleuze Studies Conference, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, June 25-27.
2012 “1991: Queering the Time-Image, or the Transformation of Minor Cinema.” Framing the Cinematic Calendar: Grids and Timelines of the Moving Image. The Ninth Tel Aviv International Colloquium on Cinema and Television Studies, Tel Aviv University, June 5-7.
2011 “The Queer is (Un)Dead: Memories of Futures Past.” Deleuzian Futures: International Conference and Masterclass, Tel Aviv University, May 22-24.
2011 “Phantom Menace: Simulacral Logic and the Future of New Queer Cinema.” Media Citizenship: The Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 10-13.
2010 “Signs of Digital Sexuality: Queering the Cinematic Image, or What Comes after the Time-Image.” 3rd International Deleuze Studies Conference, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 12-14.
2010 “Digitally Queer: The Epo-Sign and Cinematic Narrative.” Western Canons in the Digital Era: Research Workshop of the Israel Science Foundation, Tel Aviv University, June 1-4.
2009 “Exhausting the Impossible: Queerness as Becoming-Revolutionary and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Cinema.” 2nd International Deleuze Studies Conference, University of Cologne, Germany, August 10-12.
2009 “No (Future) Guaranties: Becoming-Revolutionary, Cinema and the Prospects for Change.” (an)Other Sex 9, Tel Aviv University, May 31-June [Hebrew].
2006 “Donnie Darko: Becoming, Desire and a Schizophrenic Cinematic Machine.” 6th International Colloquium on Cinema Studies, Tel Aviv University, June 7-9 [Hebrew].