Avner Ben-Amos (born 1951) is an Israeli historian of education, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University School of Education, a playwright, and a social activist.
Early life
Ben-Amos' paternal grandfather grew up in a religious Jewish house in Minsk, and later became secular. His grandmother grew up in an upper-middle-class family. They immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1924. Avner’s father, Emanuel Ben-Amos, served in the Palmach, lived in a kibbutz, and studied acting. Avner’s mother, Michal (Kohl) Ben-Amos, daughter of a prosperous merchant, grew up in Magdeburg, Germany. In 1939, at age 16, she immigrated to Palestine, studied Nursing, and participated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1947, Emanuel Ben-Amos joined the Cameri Theatre and had a short-lived stardom. In 1964, he settled in New York, worked as a director of commercials, and died there in 2007.
Avner Ben-Amos was born in 1951 and raised in Tel Aviv. Avner has one younger sister, Tamar Shaptro (Ben-Amos), and a brother from his father’s second marriage. He attended Municipal High School E (Ironi Heh) in Tel Aviv and did his military service in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. Ben-Amos completed a bachelor’s degree in the Department of Theatre Studies and the History Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1973-1977) and a master’s degree (1978-1980) and a doctorate (1981-1988) in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. The subject of his dissertation was “Molding the National Memory: State Funerals in the French Third Republic.” His dissertation advisor was Prof. Martin Jay. The dissertation was published as a book in English by Oxford University Press and in French by the publishing house of École des hautes études en sciences sociales (the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris. During his doctoral research, he lived in Paris for several years.
Academic career
In 1990, he was appointed to the faculty of the Tel Aviv University School of Education, where he worked until his retirement. He has been a lecturer and visiting scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), New College at the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, Paris Diderot University, the UCL Institute of Education, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
He was a member of the Pedagogic Committee of Massuah Institute and a member of the Scientific Council of the Ghetto Fighters' House and the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. He was a member of the expert team for the Advancement of the Humanities in the Education System under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and he sits on the Board of Trustees of The Israeli Institute of History Education, Kibbutzim College. He served on the editorial board of the periodicals Hagar, Écrire L'Histoire, Amnis, and Gilui Da’at (in Hebrew). He is currently on the editorial board of the periodicals Iyunim (in Hebrew) and Revue d’histoire culturelle. He has written op-eds on educational issues on the website Ha’okets and in the newspaper Haaretz, and book reviews that appeared in Haaretz and various academic journals.
Research
In his research, Avner Ben-Amos focuses on the history of political rituals, the shaping of national memory, and the teaching of history and civics. The countries he studies are France and Israel.
Books
Funerals, Politics and Memory in Modern France, 1789-1996
This book is a multidisciplinary study of state funerals in France between the French Revolution and the death of President François Mitterrand. It aims to explain how the funerals of revered figures such as Voltaire, Napoleon Bonaparte, Victor Hugo, and Charles de Gaulle became major events that drew public attention for days or even weeks and helped mold the French national memory. Ben-Amos’s explanation, which draws on insights from the fields of education, anthropology, theater, and political science, is that these were ceremonies of a dual nature: the state funeral was simultaneously a political ritual and a personal rite of passage, and each aspect reinforced the other. The result was a significant event that drew crowds of tens or hundreds of thousands to the streets and squares of Paris and, thanks to the mass media, reached a broad audience throughout France.