East Lansing, MI 48825-1205
Ph.D., English, University of Pennsylvania
Assistant Professor
Professor Blumberg specializes in 19th Century literature and culture, history of the novel, -women and the novel, Holocaust literature and Ethnic identity and literature. Prior to joining the Madison College faculty, she taught at the University of Michigan; the University of Pennsylvania, where she won the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Teaching; Barnard College, and Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. . She is a prize winning author and earned her Masters degree in both English and Creative Writing. Her most recent publications include From ‘Houses of Study’: Reading and Writing as a Jewish Woman, Michigan Quarterly Review (Winter 2003), ‘Unnatural Self-Sacrifice’: Trollope’s Ethic of Mutual Benefit, Nineteenth-Century Literature (March 2004), and Collins’ Moonstone: The Victorian Novel as Sacrifice, Theft, Debt and Gift, to be published in Studies of the Novel (Summer 2005). During academic year 2004-05, she is completing a year-long American Postdoctoral Fellowship, awarded by the American Association of University Women.
Ilana Blumberg gave a paper in June at the Dickens International Conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem: "Sacrifice and Suicide in A Tale of Two Cities." She has an article coming out in Victorian Literature and Culture called "'Love Yourself as Your Neighbor': The Limits of Altruism and the Ethics of Personal Benefit in Adam Bede."
Ilana Blumberg gave a paper in June 2009 at the Dickens International Conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem: "Sacrifice and Suicide in A Tale of Two Cities." She has an article coming out in Victorian Literature and Culture called "'Love Yourself as Your Neighbor': The Limits of Altruism and the Ethics of Personal Benefit in Adam Bede."
Professor Ilana Blumberg’s work Houses of Study is a finalist for the Moment Magazine Emerging Writers Award. Fall 2008, Blumberg opened the Jewish Book Fair in Ann Arbor, spoke at Spertus College in Chicago, and in conversation with two other authors, closed the Women's League for Conservative Judaism National Conference, in Detroit.
Ilana Blumberg was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and won the Sami Rohr Choice Award, second prize, for her book, Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books The prizes were awarded in Jerusalem at a Gala Dinner in April 2008, during Passover, at the King David Hotel. In July 2008, the first Sami Rohr Jewish Literary Institute will be held in New York, where the two cycles of 2007-2008 inners and judges will meet for three days of discussion on matters of Jewish culture and literature. The book also won a separate award as runner-up for the National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies 2007. The book will be published in paperback in spring 2009.
Professor Ilana Blumberg served as the guest speaker at the Hadassah-Jewish Studies brunch at the University Club in October 2007, speaking about her recently published book, Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman among Books
Professor Ilana Blumberg will present a paper on December 27, 2007 at the Modern Language Association meeting in Chicago for the division on Hebrew Literature, "Frequent Fliers: Gen X Jewish Writers Between Israel and America."
Ilana Blumberg published her memoir, Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books in March 2007, which is now for sale on Amazon, as well as at Barnes and Noble and the University of Nebraska Press website. In this book, Blumberg traces her own path from a childhood immersed in Hebrew and classical Judaic texts as well as Anglo-American novels and biographies, to a womanhood where the two literatures suddenly represent mutually exclusive possibilities for life. Set in “houses of study,” from a Jewish grammar school and high school to a Jerusalem yeshiva for women to a secular American university, her memoir asks, in an intimate and poignant manner: what happens when the traditional Jewish ideal of learning asserts itself in a body that is female—a body directed by that same tradition toward a life of modesty, early marriage, and motherhood?
In summer 2006, Ilana Blumberg attended a conference at the University of Exeter on the work of Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, during which she delivered a paper called "Trollope's Heroes, His Heroines, and the Sacrifice of Sacrifice."
Ilana Blumberg attended the North American Victorian Studies Association conference at Purdue University in September 2006, and delivered a paper called, "'Love Yourself as Your Neighbor': The Ethics of Mid-Victorian Novels."
