Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (born September 30, 1942, in Toronto, Ontario) is a scholar of Performance and Jewish Studies and a museum professional.
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.
At Northview Heights she took the leading role in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, which was showcased at the Sears Drama Festival.
She lived in Israel during 1961-1962 and studied at an ulpan, worked on Kibbutz Revivim, taught manual training to boys with learning disabilities in Tel Aviv, and conducted research on textiles in Jerusalem.
She received her PhD in 1972 from Indiana University Bloomington, where she studied folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociolinguistics, and material culture under folklorist Richard Dorson.
The film records Mayer Kirshenblatt's return to his hometown, Opatów, with his family and the warm reception he and his memories received from those living there today.
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).
She was designated Distinguished Humanist for 2003 by the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at Ohio State University.
In 2017, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.