Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies | Cultural History of Israel/Palestine

Yuval Evri is an associate professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies on the Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. Professor Evri’s work focuses on cultures and identities that transgress national boundaries. His work traces the borderlands between Arab and Jewish culture and radically reimagines Middle Eastern history through this lens.

Professor Evri is a cultural historian whose work investigates the intertwined histories and cultures of Arabs and Jews that have shaped the modern Middle East. At the heart of his research is a fascination with how identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested across linguistic, national, and cultural borders. His scholarship is driven by questions at the intersection of identity, language, culture, and power, engaging multiple fields including intellectual history, translation studies, border studies, migration studies, racial and ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies.

A central focus of his work is the cultural history of Arab Jews (Mizrahim) pre- and post-1948 and the partition of Palestine, and the ways the Arab-Jewish culture transgresses and challenges the national and colonial imaginations and partitions in Israel/Palestine and in the Middle East. Evri’s research offers a vision of identity that embraces multiplicity and re-imagines shared histories in Palestine/Israel.

Professor Evri holds the Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. He primarily teaches courses on Palestine/Israel, Middle Eastern Cities, and Mizrahi and Arab-Jewish cultural history.