Prof. Gadi Algazi

I am currently completing a book on the shaping of scholars’ way of life and habitus between 1480 and 1630. Two recent publications from this project are “At the Study: Notes on the Production of the Scholarly Self,” in: Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 17–50, and “Exemplum and Wundertier: Three Concepts of the Scholarly Persona,” Low Countries Historical Review 131:4 (2016), 8–32. Another project deals with processes of dispossession and re-settlement in Israel of the early 1950s.

Research Interests

Late medieval and early modern social and cultural history; historical anthropology; the history and theory of the social sciences; settler colonialism and frontier societies.

Books

• Gadi Algazi, Herrengewalt und Gewalt der Herren im späten Mittelalter: Herrschaft, Gegenseitigkeit und Sprachgebrauch [Historische Studien, vol. 17] (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 1996) [Seigniorial Power and Violence in the Later Middle Ages: Lordship, Reciprocity and Language Use]
• Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner & Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange [Veröffentlichhungen des Max Planck Instituts für Geschichte, 188] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003)

Articles

• “The Social Use of Private War: Some Late Medieval Views Reviewed”, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte: Zur Sozial- und Begriffsgeschichte des Mittelalters 22 (1993), pp. 253-274
• “Violence, mémoire et pouvoir seigneurial au Moyen Age tardiv”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (Paris) No. 105 (1994), pp. 26-29 [“Violence, Memory, and Seigniorial Power in the later Middle Ages”]
• “Sie würden hinten nach so gail: Vom sozialen Gebrauch der Fehde im späten Mittelalter”, in: Physische Gewalt: Studien zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, Alf Lüdtke and Thomas Lindenberger eds. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 39-77 [“The Social Use of Private War in the Later Middle Ages”]
• “ ‘Sich selbst Vergessen’ im späten Mittelalter: Denkfiguren und soziale Kon­figurationen”, in: Memoria als Kultur, Otto Gerhard Oexle ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), pp. 387-427
• “The Shape of the Landscape: Nicholas of Cusa, the Mosel Peasants and the Rural Law”, in: Popular Culture, B.-Z. Kedar ed. (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1996), pp. 123–139 [in Hebrew]
• “Culture Heroes and Heroes’ Cult”, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 58 (1997), pp. 40–47 [in Hebrew]
• “Lords Ask, Peasants Answer: Making Traditions in Late Medieval German Village Assemblies”, in: Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations, Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith eds. [Anthropological Horizons, vol. 11] (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997), pp. 199–229; Russian translation: Istorija i antropologija: meždisciplinarnye issledovanija na rubeže XX – XXI vekov, Michael Krom, David Sabean, Gadi Algazi, eds. [History & Anthropology] (St. Petersburg: Alettejja, 2006), pp. 70–110
• “Otto Brunner: ‘Konkrete Ordnung’ und Sprache der Zeit”, in: Geschichte als Legitimationswissenschaft, 1918-1945, Peter Schöttler ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp 166–203 [“Otto Brunner: ‘Concrete Order’ and the Language of the Times”] (2nd edition 1999; Japanese translation, 2001)
• “Ein gelehrter Blick ins lebendige Archiv: Umgangsweisen mit der Vergangenheit im 15. Jahrhundert”, Historische Zeitschrift 266:2 (1998), pp. 317–357 [“A Learned View of a Living Archive: Coping with the Past in the Fifteenth Century”]
• “Tradition als Gespräch der Ungleichen: Bauern und Herren in der spät­mittel­alterli­chen Dorfversammlung”, in: Eid und Wahrheitssuche, Stefan Esders & Thomas Scharff eds. [Gesellschaft, Kultur und Schrift: Mediävistische Beiträge, vol. 7] (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 191–210 [“Unequal Dialogs: Lords and Peasants in Late Medieval Village Assemblies”]
• “Bodily Rites and Social Organization: Norbert Elias’ Process of Civilization”, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 70 (March 2000), pp. 62–83 [in Hebrew]
• “Norbert Elias – His Life and Main Works”, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 70 (March 2000), pp. 60–61 [in Hebrew]
• “Kulturkult und die Rekonstruktion von Handlungsrepertoires”, L’homme: Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 11:1 (2000), pp. 105–119 [“Culture Cult and the Reconstruction of Repertoires for Action”]
• “Pruning Peasants: Private War and Maintaining the Lords’ Peace in Late Medieval Germany”, in: Medieval Transformations: Texts, Power and Gifts in Context, Esther Cohen & Mayke de Jong eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 245–274
• Gadi Algazi & Rina Drory, “L’amour à la cour des ‘abbasides: Un code de compétence sociale”, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 55:6 (2000), pp. 1255–1282 [“Love: A Code for Social Competence at the Abbasid Court”]
• “Gelehrte Zerstreutheit und gelernte Vergesslichkeit: Bemerkungen zu ihrer Rolle in der Formierung des Gelehrtenhabitus”, in: Der Fehltritt: Vergehen und Versehen in der Vormoderne[Norm und Struktur, 15] (Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau, 2001), pp. 235–250 [“Scholarly Absent-Mindedness and Learned Forgetfulness: Notes on their Role in Shaping the Scholarly Habitus”]
• “Abelard, Heloise, and Astrolabe: A Note on Babies’ Cries and Scholars’ Peace of Mind”, in: Women, Children and the Elderly: Essays in Honour of Shulamit Shahar, Miriam Eliav-Feldon & Yitzhak Hen eds. (Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2001), pp. 85–98 [in Hebrew]
• “Hofkulturen im Vergleich: ‘Liebe’ bei den frühen Abbasiden”, in: Das europäische Mittelalter im Spannbogen des Vergleichs, Michael Borgolte ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), pp. 187–196 [“Court Cultures Compared: ‘Love’ in the Early Abbasid Period”]
• “Food for Thought: Hieronymus Wolf grapples with the scholarly habitus,” in: Egodocuments in History: Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages, Rudolf Dekker ed. (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), pp. 21–44
• "Some Problems with Reciprocity,” Endoxa, Series Filosóficas no. 15 (2002), pp. 43–50
• “Studying Learned Nature: The Shaping of the Concept of Habitus in Bourdieu’s Work,” Israeli Sociology 4:2 (2002), pp. 401–410 [in Hebrew]
• “Doing Things with Gifts,” in: Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner & Bernhard Jussen eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 9–27
• “Feigned Reciprocities: Lords, Peasants, and the Afterlife of Medieval Social Strategies,” in: Negotiating the Gift: Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner & Bernhard Jussen eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 99–127
• “Scholars in Households: Refiguring the Learned Habitus, 1480-1550,” Science in Context 16:1-2 (2003)(special issue: Scientific Personae, edited by Lorraine Daston and H. Otto Sibum), pp. 9–42
• “ 'For this boy I prayed': Konrad Pellikan and the Making of Scholarly Families in Northern Europe,” Historia 14 (2004), pp. 7–48 [in Hebrew]
• “Listening to the Voice which says No,” The Refuseniks’ Trials (Tel Aviv: Babel Publishing House, 2004), pp. 11–35 [in Hebrew]
• “Between the Desert and the Forest: Reading a Foundation Story,” Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 89 (March 2005), pp. 50–59 [in Hebrew]
• Review essay: “Diversity Rules: On Peregrine Horden & Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000),” Mediterranean Historical Review 20:2 (2005), pp. 227–245
• “Geistesabwesenheit: Gelehrte zuhause um 1500,” Historische Anthropologie 13:3 (2005), pp. 325–342 ["Absent-Minded: Scholars at Home around 1500"] (reprinted in: Gelehrtenleben: Wissenschaftspraxis in der Neuzeit, Alf Lüdtke & Reiner Prass, eds. (Köln/Weimar/Berlin: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 215–234)
• “Matrix in Bil‘in: A Story of Colonial Capitalism in Current Israel,” Theory and Criticism 29 (2006), pp. 173–192 [in Hebrew]; German version: “Kapital, Kolonialismus und ziviler Widerstand in der Westbank,” Historische Anthropologie 14:3 (2006), pp. 441–456; English version: “Offshore Zionism”, New Left Review 40 (August 2006), pp. 27–37
• “Bourdieu and Other High Trees,” Theory & Critique 28 (2006), pp. 67–69 [in Hebrew]
• “Dogs, Scholars, and other Animals,” in: Human Beings and Other Animals in Historical Perspective, Benjamin Arbel, Joseph Terkel, Sophia Menashe eds. (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2007), pp. 193–204 [in Hebrew]
• “Eine gelernte Lebensweise: Figurationen des Gelehrtenlebens zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,” Berichte zur Wissenschafts­geschichte 30:2 (2007), pp. 107–118
• “Bodily Rites and Social Organization: Norbert Elias’ Process of Civilization,” in: New Times: Studies in Modern Historiography, Joseph Mali ed. (Raanana: The Upen University Press, 2007), pp. 83–128 (an expanded and updated version of the version of 2000) [in Hebrew]
• “From now on I’ll put all I have in this mess: On Michal Aviad’s Film, Jenny & Jenny,” Documentally: Papers on Israeli Documentary Cinema, Ma‘ayan Amir ed. (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), pp. 99–109 [in Hebrew]
• “Sperrzonen und Grenzfälle: Beobachtungen zu Herrschaft und Gewalt im kolonialen Kontext zwischen Israel und Palästina,” in: Staats-Gewalt: Ausnahme­zustand und Sicherheitsregimes. Historische Perspektiven, Alf Lüdtke & Michael Wildt, eds. (Göttinger Gespräche zur Geschichts­wissenschaft) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), pp. 309–346
• “Norbert Elias’s Motion Pictures: History, Cinema and Gestures in the Process of Civilization,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science  39 (2008), pp. 444–45
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam, David Shulman, & Gadi Algazi, “On Connected Histories and the Unknown Faces of Modernity: A Conversation with Sanjay Subrahmanyam,” Historia 22 (2008), pp. 5–28 [in Hebrew]
• “Public Sociology: Some Comments,” Israeli Sociology 10:2 (2009), pp. 449–455 [in Hebrew
• “Habitus, familia und forma vitae: Die Lebensweisen mittelalterli­­cher Gelehrten in muslimischen, jüdischen und christlichen Gemeinden – vergleichend betrachtet,” in: Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte der Gelehrten im späten Mittelalter, Frank Rexroth ed. [Vorträge und Forschungen 73] (Osftildern: Thorbecke Verlag, 2010), pp. 185–217
• “Women, Books and Scholars,” Zmanim 109 (2010), pp. 90–97 [in Hebrew
• “Vie de famille et dévouement au savoir — les héritages ambivalents des communautés pré-modernes chrétiennes, musulmanes et juives,” in: Les origines théologiques cachées de la pensée politique dans les pays de la Méditerranée, Giovanni Levi & Paola Gandolfi, eds. (Paris: Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme, 2010), pp. 257–265
• Review Essay: “Bringing Kinship (Back) In: On David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher, Jon Mathieu (eds.), Kinship in Europe, 1300–1900 (New York: Berghahn, 2007),” Mediterranean Historical Review 25:1 (2010), pp. 83–92
• “From Gir Forest to Umm Hiran: Notes on Colonial Nature and its Keepers,” Theory & Critique 37 (2010), pp. 233–253 [in Hebrew]
• “Bourdieu on Social Space,” Theory & Critique 38–39 (2011), pp. 261–268 [in Hebrew]
• “At the Study: Notes on the Production of the Scholarly Self,” in: Space and Self in Early Modern European Cultures, David Warren Sabean and Malina Stefanovska, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 17–50
• “Les âges moyens et les reliques vivantes: deux figures de l'imagination historique,” in: Pourquoi étudier le Le Moyen Âge ? Les médiévistes face aux usages sociaux du passé, Didier Méhu, Néri de Barros Almeida, Marcelo Cândido da Silva, eds. (Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012), pp. 161–177
• “Johannes Keplers Apologie: Wissensproduktion, Selbst­darstellung und die Geschlechterordnung,” in: Wissen, maßgeschneidert: Experten und Experten­kulturen im Europa der Vormoderne, Björn Reich, Frank Rexroth & Matthias Roick, eds. [Beihefte der Historischen Zeitschrift, 57] (München: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 215–249 [Dr. Kepler’s Apologia: Knowledge Production, Self-Representation and Gender]
• “Middling Ages and Living Relics as Objects to Think with: Two Figures of the Historical Imagination,” in Modernity’s Classics, Sarah C. Humphreys and Rudolf G. Wagner, eds. (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2013), pp. 315–329 [expanded English version of the French one]
• “Comparing Medieval Institutions: A Few Concluding Remarks,” Diverging Paths? The Shape of Power and Institutions in Mediaeval Islam and Christendom, John Hudson and Ana Rodriguez, eds. (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2014), pp. 3–15
• “Forget Memory: Some Critical Remarks on Memory, Forgetting and History”, in Damnatio in Memoria: Deformation und Gegenkonstruktionen von Geschichte, Sebastian Scholz, Gerald Schwedler, and Kai-Michael Sprenger, eds. (Vienna/Cologne/Weimer: Böhlau, 2014), pp. 25–34
• “Exemplum and Wundertier: Three Concepts of the Scholarly Persona,” Low Countries Historical Review 131:4 (2016), pp. 8–32

Reviews

• Review of Honor and Grace in Anthropology, ed. by J. G. Peristiany and Julian Pitt-Rivers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Mediterranean Historical Review 9:2 (1994), pp. 285–287
• Review of Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), Mediterranean Historical Review 12:2 (1997), pp. 79–82
• Review of Zvi Razi & Richard Smith eds., Medieval Society and the Manor Court (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 62 (1998), pp. 109–113 [in Hebrew]
• Review of Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Israeli Sociology 1:1 (1998), pp. 190–193 [in Hebrew]
• Review of Tamar Berger, Dionysus at Dizengoff Centre (Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz Ha-Me’uchad, 1998), HaAretz Literary Supplement, 6.4.1999 [in Hebrew]
• Review of Marc Bloch, Apologie de l’histoire ou métier d’historien (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2002), HaAretz Literary Supplement, 20.9.2003 [in Hebrew]
• Review of Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2006), HaAretz Sfarim, 12.4.2006 [in Hebrew]
• Review of Etienne de la Boétie, Discours de la servitude volontaire, Reuven Miran trans. (Tel Aviv: Nahar, 2006) HaAretz Sfarim, 2007, 5.6.2007 [in Hebrew]
• “Bernard Lahire’s Oeuvre: An Invitation,” Theory & Critique 33 (2008), pp.73–75 [in Hebrew]
• Review Essay: “Already in Europe: Robert Bartlett’s Making of Europe in Hebrew”, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly (forthcoming) [in Hebrew]

Translations

• Norbert Elias, Selections from The Process of Civilization, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 70 (2000), pp. 84–89 [in Hebrew]
• Pierre Bourdieu, “Critique du discours lettré”, Theory and Critique [Jerusalem] 28 (2006), pp. 70–74  [in Hebrew]
• Peter Baumann, “Messer, Gabel und moderne Zeiten: Zu Norbert Elias’ Zivilisationstheorie,” Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 70 (2000), pp. 90–95 [in Hebrew]
• Natalie Zemon Davis, “A Life of Learning, (1997),” Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly 71 (2000), pp. 4–19 [in Hebrew]
• Amos Funkenstein, “Knowledge as Key to Salvation”, Zmanim – A Historical Quarterly no. 73 (2001), pp. 4–9 [in Hebrew]
• Kurt Schwitters, “Die Zoologische Garten-Lotterie (1931),” Mita‘am: Literary Quarterly 4 (2005), pp. 150–157 [in Hebrew]
• Pierre Bourdieu, “Espace social et genèse des ‘classes’,” Theory and Critique 38-39 (2011), pp. 235–260 [in Hebrew]
• Pierre Bourdieu, Selections from Distinction (unpublished)
• Pierre Bourdieu, “Le langage autorisé: note sur les conditions sociales de l’efficacité du discours rituel” (unpublished)