Nitza Ben-Dov

Nitza Ben-Dov was born in 1950 in Tel Aviv

Nitza Ben-Dov was born Nitza Fruchtman in Tel Aviv on 10 March 1950. Her parents were Holocaust survivors. Her father, Dov Fruchtman, taught literature and wrote studies on the work of S.Y. Agnon.

She finished high school at the New High School in Tel Aviv in 1968 and then served in the Nahal. She studied Hebrew literature and Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1970 to 1973. She earned her master's degree and doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, writing her dissertation on dreams and psychology in the work of Agnon and Kafka.

She taught at Princeton University from 1986 to 1989. In 1989 she joined the University of Haifa, where she became a professor. She was editor in chief of the university press from 1996 to 2000, chaired the Academic TV channel from 2001 to 2005, and founded programs in women's and gender studies and in cultural studies.

Her research covers writers such as Agnon, A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz and Yehuda Amichai, using structuralist, feminist and psychoanalytic approaches. Her 1993 book on Agnon introduced the term "the art of indirection." She is married to Yosi Ben-Dov, former head of the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, and they have 3 children.