Mikhal Dekel

Mikhal Dekel is an Israeli-born author and professor of literature based in the United States, specializing in the theory of migrations, historical memoir, representations of trauma, and the overlap between law and literature. She teaches English and Comparative Literature at City College New York (CCNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, and directs CCNY's Rifkind Center for the Humanities and Arts

Dekel is the author of Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, The Universal Jew: Masculinity, Modernity and the Zionist Movement, and the Hebrew monograph Oedipus be-Kishinev (Oedipus in Kishinev). Dekel has also published articles on topics such as George Eliot's Hebrew translations, tragedy and revenge in Hebrew literature, and autism and the English novel. Her scholarly work has received support from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, and the Lady Davis Foundation, among others.

Other Writing Dekel's previous book in English, The Universal Jew, examines literary depictions of Jewish Nationhood and citizenship during the Zionist movement's formative period in the late nineteenth-century. It shows how literary works by Theodor Herzl, George Eliot, Hayim Nahman Bialik and others were shaped by, and also helped shape a new political reality and Jewish identity.

Her articles have appeared in Foreign Policy, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Guernica, and other print and online publications.