Dr. Anastasiia Simferovska

Professional Background

Anastasiia Simferovska earned her first PhD in art history from the Lviv National Academy of Arts and is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Jewish Studies Cluster Program at Northwestern University, where her dissertation focuses on image migration in artistic and literary Holocaust texts in Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II. Prior to her arrival at Northwestern, Dr. Simferovska worked as a scholar-in-residence,  researcher, and tour guide at the Borys Voznytsky National Art Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine. 

In her research, Dr. Simferovska explores cultural, artistic, and literary relations among Jews, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians throughout the  20^th century, with a specific focus on national and cultural identity, the idea of otherness, and the reaction to and representation of war and violence. Among her most recent peer-reviewed publications is “A  Plagiarized Testimony? Authorship, Legacy, and the Holocaust Art of  Henryk Beck and Zinovii Tolkachev” in the Journal for Holocaust  Research.

Dr. Simferovska has presented her research at multiple international conferences, including the “Art of the Holocaust until 1989: Beyond an East/West  Divide” (CEU/KEMKI, 2022), the Lessons and Legacies Interim Meeting (2021), and an EHRI seminar (2017). Her research and teaching were supported by the  Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, the NU Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, and the Gaude Polonia Fellowship of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. 

Fellowship Research 

Anastasiia Simferovska was awarded the Kurt and Thea Sonnenmark Memorial Fellowship for her research  project, “Images Displaced and Disguised: The Holocaust Text in Eastern European Art.” Bridging eyewitness accounts and the post-witness imagination of Holocaust victims and bystanders, her project explores specific Holocaust-centered images and tropes either repeatedly or unexpectedly borrowed and reclaimed by various authors from the different sides of frontlines or postwar borderlands. Through analyzing transformations of form, meaning, and function of Holocaust images, Dr. Simferovska explores the concept of the Holocaust text as a form of cross-cultural dialogue among Jews, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians. Tracing survival patterns of Holocaust images in the context of individual trauma, national narratives of competing victimhood, and postwar Soviet censorship, her project ultimately questions the role and meaning of artistic mimicry, borrowing, plagiarism, and cultural appropriation in the context of war, genocide, and its aftermath. 

Residency Period: June 1, 2025–July 31, 2025