Elazar (Elik) Elhanan is a literary scholar, essayist and activist. he is an associate Professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, CUNY City College and The Graduate Center, where he teaches Hebrew and Yiddish literature in the Michael and Irene Ross Jewish Studies Program, as well as classes in comp-lit, translation theory and critical theory. Elik works mainly on modernist poetry and studies the relations between language and politics, identity and nation-building. Elik received his PhD in Comparative Literature and Middle East studies from Columbia University and his work was published in various venues in the US, Israel and France; his book entitled The Path Leading to the Abyss: Hebrew and Yiddish in Yaakov Steinberg’s Poetry is forthcoming. His current research deal with poetics and aesthetics of large scale public "works of mourning", common in Hebrew and Yiddish modernism.
