Paola S. Hernández
Credentials: Director - Graduate Studies
Position title: Mellon-Morgridge Professor
Email: pshernandez@wisc.edu
Address:
1034 Van Hise Hall
Spring 2025 Office Hours
Mondays: noon-1:00pm
Wednesdays: 4:00-5:00pm
Biography
Paola S. Hernández specializes in contemporary Latin American theatre, performance, and Latinx Studies. She has published numerous articles on Southern Cone theatre, performance and memory politics, sites of memory, human rights, and documentary theatre. She is the author of Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies-Objects-Archives (Northwestern University Press, 2021); El teatro de Argentina y Chile: Globalización, resistencia y desencanto (Corregidor, 2009); co-editor with Analola Santanta of Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre (Routledge 2022); with Pamela Brownell of Biodrama/Proyecto Archivos: seis documentales escénicos by Vivi Tellas (Papeles Teatrales, Universidad de Córdoba, 2018), as well as co-editor (with Brenda Werth and Florian Becker) of Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First-Century Theater: Global Perspectives (Palgrave, 2013). Her current research project is tentatively titled (In)Visible Bodies: Performing Rights on the US-Mexico Border. As an affiliate of Chicanx and Latinx Studies, and a core member of Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, she teaches a variety of courses on visual arts, migration and border studies, as well as theatre and performance studies of the Americas, and has staged a variety of Latin American plays on campus. She is Director of Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, Graduate Studies Director in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, and Executive Committee member of the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR).
https://wisc.academia.edu/PaolaHernandez
Education
PhD University of Kansas
Honors and Awards
2024-2025. Vilas Life Cycle Professorship, Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2023-2027. Mellon-Morgridge Professor of Humanities, College of Letters and Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2021-2022. Mellon-Borghesi Workshop Grant, Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2018. Institute for Research in the Humanities: Summer Research Funding and Next Book Workshop, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2016-17. Vilas Associate Award, The Graduate School, University of Wisconsin.
2016. Resident Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin.
2010. Premio Teatro del Mundo. First Prize Award granted by the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, for El teatro en Argentina y Chile: Globalización, resistencia y desencanto.
Selected Publications
Podcast:
https://newbooksnetwork.com/staging-lives-in-latin-american-theater
Books:
Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre.
Staging Lives in Latin American Theater: Bodies-Objects-Archives. Northwestern University Press, 2021.
Biodrama/Proyecto Archivos: Seis documentales escénicos de Vivi Tellas. Eds. Pamela Brownell and Paola Hernández. Córdoba: Papeles Teatrales, Universidad Nacional de
Córdoba, 2018.
Imagining Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century Theater: Global Perspectives. Co-edited with Brenda Werth and Florian Becker. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
El teatro de Argentina y Chile: Globalización, resistencia y desencanto. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2009.
Articles and Chapters:
“Women’s Testimonies on Stage: Femicides Across the US-Mexico Border.” Bodies on the Front Lines: Performance, Gender, and Sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Eds. Brenda Werth and Katherine Zien. Michigan University Press, 2024. 208-226 pp.
“BASTA: Reactivating Bodies and the Dramaturgy of Femicides in Argentina.” In Performance that Change the Americas, ed. Stuart A. Day. London and New York: Routledge, 2021.
“El nuevo teatro documental del siglo XXI: fundamentos teóricos de Latinoamérica”, en J. Dubatti (ed./coord.), Poéticas de liminalidad en el teatro II. Lima, PERU, Escuela Nacional Superior de Arte Dramático, 2019. 135-145: 529pp.
“Critical Introduction” co-written with Pamela Brownell. Biodramas/Proyecto Archivos: Seis documentales escénicos de Vivi Tellas. Córdoba: Papeles Teatrales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2018. 7-36: 288pp.
“The Art of Production: Staging Latin(o) American Plays. Latin American Theatre Review (Fall 2016): 113-131.
“Remapping Memory Discourses: Villa and Discurso by Guillermo Calderón” South Central Review (John Hopkins UP) 30:3 Winter 2013: 60-75.
“The ESMA: From Torture Chambers to Museum of Memory.” in Imagining Human Rights in Twenty-First Century Theater: Global Perspectives. 67-82.
“Biografías escénicas: Mi vida después de Lola Arias”. LATR 45:1. Special Issue: What’s New in Latin American Theatre and Performance? (Fall 2011): 115-128.
“Escenas desintegradas: Federico León y Rafael Spregelburd.” telondefondo: Revista de teoría y crítica teatral. (special bicentennial issue—invited).
http://www.telondefondo.org (July, 2010) 1-17.