With great sadness, we announce the passing of Professor Emeritus Arnold J. Band. He was a valued member of the Near Eastern Languages & Cultures department. Please send your thoughts and condolences to their family at this difficult time.
Professor Arnold J. Band earned his BA in Classics and his PhD in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He has also studied at the Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and at the University of Paris. His research focuses on the relationship between texts and historical contexts in Jewish Literature of all periods, and specifically in modern Hebrew literature. He has published a lengthy study on the Hebrew author S.Y. Agnon entitled Nostalgia and Nightmare, an annotated volume of translations of the Hasidic Tales of Nahman of Braslav, and many articles on a variety of other topics, such as Kafka, Bialik, The Book of Jonah, Semantic Rhyme in Hebrew Prosody, modern Israeli fiction and poetry. Professor Band founded the UCLA Comparative Literature Program in 1969 and was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1981. He has received both a National Endowment of Humanities Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was the Director of UCLA’s Jewish Studies Center from 1994 to 1996.
There will be a live stream of his funeral on Tuesday, July 9, 2024 at 11:00am, at https://gardenofremembrance.org/ (click on the video livestream icon).