Books

Teaching Israel Studies by Amelia Weinreb book image

“A collection of well-researched and creative strategies for helping students learn in the unique context of Israel Studies. Amelia Weinreb demonstrates a deep awareness of the research on how people learn, and draws judiciously from the well of her own teaching experiences, to provide a helpful and friendly guide to navigating a challenging teaching context.”

—James M. Lang, Ph.D., author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning

“Adding to the growing body of guides to support the teaching of Israel Studies, Weinreb’s important new volume Teaching Israel Studies provides fresh ideas for classroom engagement. Anchored by research on teaching and learning and 40 interviews with Israel Studies faculty, this book offers pedagogical tools to help instructors design, develop and implement Israel Studies courses in higher education.”

— Rachel S. Harris, Associate Professor of Israeli Literature and Culture at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Teaching Israel Studies

• Carves out a new pedagogic path for existing and future scholarship in Israel Studies

• Provides examples of theoretically and culturally engaged Israel content for global classrooms

• Includes strategies for virtual learning, on-site instruction from Israel, and forging institutional partnerships

This book presents pedagogical strategies for today’s diverse Israel Studies classrooms. It offers Israel-specific innovations for online teaching, tested methods for organizing global virtual exchanges that uplift marginalized voices in Israel, including Palestinian voices, and an intellectual and political overview of the field. Informed by the author’s experiences in the classroom and principles shared with her by fellow instructors, the book provides a guide to developing an Israel Studies syllabus or integrating Israel Studies units into an existing curriculum.

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Cuba in the Shadow of Change by Amelia Weinreb book image

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“This book is a masterpiece. Accurate, lyrical, and empathetic in its illumination of the lives of ordinary Cubans, as they survive and thrive in the bizarre economic and political environment of Cuba during its ‘Special Period.’”

Archibald Ritter, Carleton University

“Cuba in the Shadow of Change is unquestionably the most important full-length monograph to come out of the island in recent memory.”

American Ethnologist

“Weinreb’s ethnographic participant-observation succeeds in producing an analysis from about as deep within Cuban realities as it is possible for an outsider to get.”
Latin American Research Review

“A fascinating, attractively written narrative about living in Cuba as it changed erratically under the Castro brothers in the first decade of the 21st century. . . . Highly recommended.”
Choice

“Weinreb’s findings set the stage for future studies of middle-class Cubans”
American Anthropologist

“Weinreb’s innovative study on Cuba’s silent majority is highly recommended to all historians, ethnographers, and social scientists who are interested in contemporary Cuba and in gaining new insights in order to explain widely known phenomena and changes within Cuban society since the 1990s.”
H-Net Reviews

Cuba in the Shadow of Change

Cuba in the Shadow of Change analyzes the new Cuban Middle class: an under-described and un-theorized group that is arguably in the majority on the isolated island. Amelia Weinreb focuses on the struggles of these individuals during the final years of the Fidel Castro era and addresses citizen and consumer changes that have taken place since Raúl Castro became president in February 2008.

The Cuban middle class has been able to best cope with problematic political and economic structures by utilizing purposeful obscurity, rather than activism. Weinreb demonstrates that these unsatisfied citizen-consumers’ political silence, underground economic activity, and secret identity as prospective migrants mark the boundaries of a significant “shadow public.”

Her experiences and conversations with Cubans–over the clothesline, in the back bedroom, at the kitchen table, and on the living room sofa–allow for an unforgettable look into the daily life of the local middle class. Her observations reveal much about the anxieties and clandestine plans that have shaped this largely silent majority during the waning years of the Castro regime.