After receiving his BA in Middle East studies and political economy in 2006 from Evergreen in Olympia, WA, Eli Sperling pursued an MA in contemporary Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University (2010). He has traveled and conducted research extensively throughout the Middle East, spending significant periods of time in Israel, Cairo and the Sinai Peninsula and received his PhD from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in September 2019.
From 2012-2020, Eli served as the Senior Academic Research Coordinator at Emory University’s Institute for the Study of Modern Israel, where he also taught as a guest lecturer at the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies. His research focuses on the proliferation and use of Hebrew music from Palestine in the American Jewish community between 1920-1948. He investigates how this music played a role in a greater process through which varying streams of transnational Zionism became enmeshed in American Jewish institutional, congregational, educational and communal life.
We look forward to welcoming Eli to Duke as the Post-doc in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and to the Duke Center for Jewish Studies!
Center for Jewish Studies
