University of Cambridge
From Reluctant to Radical Revolutionaries: The Conservative Foundation of the Zionist Revolution
Nathanel Stawski writes his dissertation in the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. His research focuses on the history of the Zionist Movement and aims to offer the first reading of early Zionism through the lens of political and social conservatism, thereby highlighting one of Zionism’s most paradoxical aspects, namely the conservative outlook of its revolutionary founders. A contextual reading of the writings of Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau and others - situating Zionism within the broader transformation of Central European liberalism in the late 19th century from an emancipatory force into a conservative one - would reveal that their insights regarding the turn to nationalism as a mobilizing force paralleled those reached by other German-speaking liberals of their time; these liberals, similarly, turned to nationalism not out of romantic aspirations but as a response to the rise of radical politics during the 1890s, wishing to conserve the waning hegemony of Central European bourgeois liberalism.
Prior to arriving at Cambridge, Nathanel completed his MA in History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his BA in Liberal Arts and Middle Eastern Studies at Shalem College.