Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (born September 30, 1942, in Toronto, Ontario) is a scholar of Performance and Jewish Studies and a museum professional. Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University, she is best known for her interdisciplinary contributions to Jewish studies and to the theory and history of museums, tourism, and heritage. She is currently the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition and Advisor to the Director at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.[1]
Biography
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was born in Toronto, Ontario, during the
Academic career
An honors English major at the University of Toronto from 1962 to 1965, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an A.B. and M.A. in English literature in 1966 and 1967 respectively. She received her PhD in 1972 from Indiana University, Bloomington, where she studied folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociolinguistics, and material culture under folklorist Richard Dorson.[citation needed]
She has held faculty appointments at the University of Texas at Austin (English Literature and Anthropology), Columbia University (Linguistics and Yiddish Studies), University of Pennsylvania (Folklore and Folklife), and New York University (Performance Studies) since 1981. She is Professor Emerita of Performance Studies and distinguished University Professor Emerita (an honor conferred in 2002) at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she chaired her department for more than a decade. She was also Affiliated Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies in the Graduate School of Arts and Science.[2] From 2000 to 2001, she held a fellowship at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.[3]
Advisory boards and roles
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Kirshenblatt-Gimblett served as President of the American Folklore Society from 1988 to 1992 and as the AFS delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies. She has been on boards and advisory committees for the following institutions: Getty Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities; Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution; Stanford Humanities Center; Association for Museum History; the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College; Association for Jewish Studies Executive Board and AJS Women's Caucus; the American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts; Social Science Research Council; and International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University. She was admitted, by invitation, to the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Society of American Historians. She is on the Academic Advisory Council of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Museums
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Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has worked as a consultant for many museums, exhibition projects, and cultural festivals. These include
She has been on the advisory boards for the
She has curated exhibitions for the
In 2006, after consulting for the
Writing
They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust, which she coauthored with her father
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is the author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (University of California Press, 1998). She co-authored The Israel Experience: Studies in Youth Travel and Jewish Identity with Harvey Goldberg and Samuel Heilman (Jerusalem: Studio Kavgraph, Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, 2002). Her edited books include Writing Modern Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Salo W. Baron (Yale University Press, 2006), which won a
Her earlier books include Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939, with Lucjan Dobroszycki (Schocken, reissued 1995), which was accompanied by a landmark exhibition for the
Honors
She was designated Distinguished Humanist for 2003 by the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at Ohio State University. In 2008, she was honored with the Foundation for Jewish Culture award for lifetime achievement and the Mlotek Prize for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture, and was selected for the Forward 50,[6] which celebrates leadership, creativity, and impact. In 2010 she received the Shofar Award of the 25th Annual Jewish Music Festival and in 2015 she was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland from the President of Poland, an honorary doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Marshall Sklare award for her contributions to the social scientific study of Jewry. In 2017, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2020 she was honored with the Dan David Prize.[7]
Previous awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the
References
- ^ "How an NYU Scholar Became the Keeper of Poland's Jewish Heritage". April 10, 2013. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
- ^ "'Rising from the Rubble' | Syracuse University News". April 1, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
- ^ "Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett". Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.
- ^ Allison Hoffman, "The Curator of Joy and Ashes", Tablet, April 10, 2013
- ^ Ruth Ellen Gruber, “The Woman Behind the Polish Jewry Museum," The Forward, August 3, 2011, issue of August 12, 2011]
- ^ "Forward 50, 2008", The Forward, 2008
- ^ "Prof. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett". Dan David Prize. August 16, 2021. Retrieved March 14, 2022.