Dr. Paula Ansaldo

Professional Background

Paula Ansaldo received her PhD in History and Theory of Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. She is an associate researcher at the National Council for Scientific Research of Argentina and a lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires Department of Arts. Her scholarly expertise includes theater history, specializing in Latin American Jewish theater and culture. 

Dr. Ansaldo’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from Fordham University-New York Public Library, the Coimbra Group Universities, the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture-Simon Dubnow, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the American Philosophical Society, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. She also was a Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow in Judaica at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University and a Ruth Meltzer Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Ansaldo is the author of the book “Broyt mit teater”. Historia del teatro judío en Argentina (EUDEBA-University of Buenos Aires Press, 2023) and has co-edited the books Teatro independiente: historia y actualidad (Ediciones del CCC, 2017) and Perspectivas sobre la dirección teatral: teoría, historia y pensamiento escénico (National University of Córdoba Press, 2021). Her articles have appeared in Latin American Theatre Review, Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, Artescena, and Anagnórisis. 

Fellowship Research

Paula Ansaldo was awarded a Sosland Foundation Fellowship for her research project, “Representations of the Holocaust in Argentine Theatre,” which focuses on the last post-dictatorship period. By applying a "multidirectional memory" theoretical framework, her research explores how the memory of the Holocaust and the archetypical figures and motifs of Jewish culture (like the wandering Jew) functioned as a vehicle through which the Argentine-Jewish writers articulated their own memory of recent Argentine traumatic history.

Utilizing the Museum’s vase collections of oral testimonies and archival documents of Holocaust survivors who resettled in Argentina, Dr. Ansaldo aims to explore the literary dialogue of Jewish memory. She aims to highlight a collection of theatrical works overlooked in theater scholarship to foster new investigations to enrich Latin American Jewish studies.

Residency Period: February 1, 2025–May 31, 2025