Shlomy Mualem

In the first leg of my academic journey, I studied comparative literature and philosophy in these departments at Bar Ilan University. The Ariadne's cord (guiding principle) in my varied studies was the Zen-Buddhist epigram: "do not follow the footsteps of the sages, follow what they themselves followed", along with Borges' advice that we should only delve into books that inexplicably grasp our attention. Immediately after completing my comparative dissertation on Jorge Luis Borges' fiction and Plato's philosophy, I have conducted a postdoctoral study on Borges and the early philosophy of Wittgenstein in the Graduate .School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) at Harvard University

Currently I serve as an associate professor at the department of comparative literature (formerly head of the department), affirming Spinoza's view that the highest of all pleasures is intellectual undertaking. My main fields of interest span between literature, theology and philosophy, including the study of the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Plato’s philosophy, Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, ancient and modern aesthetics, theopoetics (the presence of holiness in the work of art), Cabbalistic theosophy and poetics, as well as the comparative study of Eastern and Western cultures and philosophies, with special attention given to Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. Presently, I humbly serve as co-editor of the "East and West" series at Idra Academic Press, and as the director of "the Bar Ilan Forum for Religious Studies", alongside my colleague and friend prof. Hanoch Ben-Pazi.

• Interdisciplinary Research in Literature

• East and West Research

• Philosophy and Literature, Theopoetics

Prof. Mualem CV