David Tal (historian)

David Tal (born c. 1964) is an Israeli historian and professor. Since 2009, he has been the Kahanoff Chair in Israeli Studies at the University of Calgary. He is an expert on Israel's security and diplomatic history, as well as U.S. disarmament policy.^[1]^[2]

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When we think of classic works of art, the most common setting we imagine them in is a museum. But what we often forget is that much of this art was not produced with a museum setting in mind. What happens to an artwork when it's taken out of its originally intended context? Take the example of Michelangelo's Statue of David, depicting the boy hero who slew the giant philistine, Goliath, armed with only his courage and his slingshot. When Michelangelo began carving a block of pure white marble to communicate this famous Biblical story, the city of Florence intended to place the finished product atop their grand cathedral. Not only would the 17 foot tall statue be easily visible at this height, but its placement alongside 11 other statues of Old Testament heroes towering over onlookers would have a powerful religious significance, forcing the viewer to stare in awe towards the heavens. But by the time Michelangelo had finished the work, in 1504, the plans for the other statues had fallen through, and the city realized that lifting such a large sculpture to the roof would be more difficult than they had thought. Furthermore, the statue was so detailed and lifelike, down to the bulging veins in David's arm and the determination on his face, that it seemed a shame to hide it so far from the viewer. A council of politicians and artists convened to decide on a new location for the statue. Ultimately voting to place it in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the town hall and home of the new Republican government. This new location transformed the statue's meaning. The Medici family, who for generations had ruled the city through their control of banking, had recently been exiled, and Florence now saw itself as a free city, threatened on all sides by wealthy and powerful rivals. David, now the symbol of heroic resistance against overwhelming odds, was placed with his intense stare, now a look of stern warning, focused directly towards Rome, the home of Cardinal Giovanni de Medici. Though the statue itself had not been altered, its placement changed nearly every aspect of it from a religious to a political significance. Though a replica of David still appears at the Palazzo, the original statue was moved in 1873 to the Galleria dell'Accademia, where it remains today. In the orderly, quiet environment of the museum, alongside numerous half-finished Michelangelo sculptures, overt religious and political interpretations fall away, giving way to detached contemplation of Michelangelo's artistic and technical skill. But even here, the astute viewer may notice that David's head and hand appear disproportionately large, a reminder that they were made to be viewed from below. So, not only does context change the meaning and interpretation of an artwork throughout its history, sometimes it can make that history resurface in the most unexpected ways.

Biography

Tal completed all his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Tel Aviv University, receiving his BA in 1986, MA in 1990, and Ph.D. in 1995. He was an instructor in the Department of History at Tel Aviv University from 1994–1996 and a lecturer in the Program of Security Studies from 1996–2005. He was a NATO Research Fellow from 2000–2002.^[3]

Since 2005, Tal has been a visiting professor at Emory University (2005–2006, 2008–2009) and Syracuse University (2006–2008). In 2009, he joined the Department of History at the University of Calgary as the Kahanoff Chair in Israeli Studies (2009–2014).^[3] In 2014, he moved to the University of Sussex, UK, where he is holding the Yossi Harel Chair in Modern Israel Studies.

Selected bibliography

Books

Tal, David (1993). Hezbollah, Palestinian Jihad Islamic and Hamas. Tel Aviv.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (with Anat Kurz and Maskit Burgin)
Tal, David (1998). Israel's Day-to-Day Security Conception: Its origin and development, 1949–1956 (in Hebrew). Beersheba University Press.
Tal, David (13 July 2001). The 1956 War: Collusion and rivalry in the Middle East. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-4840-X.
Tal, David (15 March 2003). War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and diplomacy. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-5275-7.
Tal, David (31 October 2008). The American Nuclear Disarmament Dilemma, 1945-1963. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-3166-8.
Tal, David (Ed.) (2013). Israel identity: between Orient and Occident
Tal, David (8 May 2017). US strategic arms policy in the Cold War: negotiation and confrontation over SALT, 1969-79
Tal, David (2022). The Making of an Alliance The Origins and Development of the US-Israel Relationship

Articles

Tal, David (1995). "The American-Israeli Security Treaty: Sequel or means to the relief of Israeli-Arab tension, 1954–1955". Middle Eastern Studies 31:4, pp. 828–848.
Tal, David (February 1996). "Israel's Road to the 1956 War". International Journal of Middle East Studies, 67.
Tal, David (1998). "Israel's Conception of Routine Security Measures". Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Tal, David (June 2000). "Symbol or Substance? Israel's campaign for U.S. Hawk missiles, 1960–1962". International History Review, 22:2.
Tal, David (Spring/Summer 2000). "The Forgotten War: The Jewish-Palestinian strife in Palestine, December 1947–May 1948". Israel Affairs, 6:3–4.
Tal, David (July 2004). "Between Intuition and Professionalism: Israeli Military Leadership during the 1948 Palestine War". The Journal of Military History. 68 (3): 885–909. doi:10.1353/jmh.2004.0147. S2CID 159891562.
Tal, David (2004). "The Battle over Jerusalem: The Israeli-Jordanian War, 1948", in Alon Kadish (ed.), Israel's War of Independence Revisited (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2004), pp. 307–339.
Tal, David (Autumn 2005). "The 1948 War in Palestine Historiography: The missing dimension". Journal of Israeli History 24:2, pp. 183–202.
Tal, David (Fall 2008). "From the Open Skies Proposal of 1955 to the Norstad Plan of 1960: A plan too far". Journal of Cold War Studies, 10:4, pp. 66–93.
Tal, David (2009) "The making, operation and failure of the May 1950 tripartite declaration on Middle East security". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Tal, David (2011). David Ben Gurion's teleological westernism. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23399570.v1

Tal, David (2013). 'Absolutes' and 'stages' in the making and application of Nixon's SALT policy. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23399561.v1
Tal, David (2014). A tested alliance: the American airlift to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23409329.v1
Tal, David (2015). What is new in the first Arab-Israeli war? A historiographical discussion. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23417750.v1
Tal, David (2016). Who needed the October 1973 War?. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23427521.v2
Tal, David (2017). Between politics and politics of identity: the case of the Arab Jews. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23428874.v1
Tal, David (2018). Jacqueline Kahanoff and the demise of the Levantine. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23448995.v1
Tal, David (2021). United States – Israel relations (1953-1957) revisited. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23474018.v1
Tal, David (2023). Ronald Reagan and Menachem Begin: bridge across stormy waters. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23495093.v1
Tal, David (2023). An arms deal as a bargaining chip: Israel and the AWACS deal. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23495150.v1
Tal, David (2023). Kissinger’s wrath: the reassessment of US-Israel relationship (March 1975). University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.24271066.v1
Tal, David (2023). The Judeo - Christian tradition and the US-Israel special relationship. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23495471.v1
Tal, David (2024). Between realism and idealism: trends and developments in the study of US-Israel relationship. University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23495474.v1

Chapters

Tal, David (2013). Israel in or of the Middle East. University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23486915.v1
Tal, David (2014). "Armament measures are not a cause, but a consequence: the legacy of Wilson and the nuclear disarmament policy of the United States"(translated from German). University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23409785.v1
Tal, David (2014). Civilian settlement: not designed to be a fortress of power. University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23494979.v1
Tal, David (2008). The 1956 Sinai war: a watershed in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23409200.v1
Tal, David (2016). Paving the road to war: Israeli diplomacy and the 1967 crisis. University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23495096.v1
Tal, David (2021). Israel’s Wars. University of Sussex. Chapter. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23475797.v1

References

^ "David Tal, Department of History". University of Tel Aviv. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ "David Tal, Research Fellow". University of Calgary. 2010. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ ^a ^b "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). University of Calgary. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 October 2015. Retrieved 23 March 2011.

External links

David Tal curriculum vitae Archived 2015-10-26 at the Wayback Machine
David Tal, University of Sussex Profiles April 2024.

This page was last edited on 17 April 2024, at 14:22

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