Israel was involved in multiple foreign aid projects to sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s as part of its quest to gain political allies and determine its place in the decolonized world. Dr. Mooreville will address how and why ophthalmology became Israel’s largest medical aid program, and in so doing address Israel’s claims to be a bridgehead between East and West, and its short-lived affiliation with the Global South. She investigates the historic symbolic significance of trachoma in Palestine, Africa as an extra-territorial site of pioneering that provided new clinical and research experiences, and how one physician took advantage of diplomatic policies to create an aid project that fulfilled his professional vision.

Anat Mooreville is the Hazel D. Cole Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research concentrates on Jewish history in the Middle East and North Africa, the history of medicine and science, and Israel-Palestine studies. She received her Ph.D. in History at UCLA in 2015 with the dissertation, “Oculists in the Orient: A History of Trachoma, Zionism, and Global Health, 1882-1973.”

A light Kosher lunch will be provided.

The Stroum Center for Jewish Studies is proud to offer this lecture as part of our Winter 2016 series, Beyond the Binary: Israel Studies Today which welcomes several emerging scholars to share new directions in the field of Israel Studies.