Orit Gugenheim Katz

Orit Gugenheim is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. After leaving home in Mexico City, she obtained her B.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Gugenheim specializes in 20th-century Latin American narratives, with a focus on Jewish authorship and representation. Her research primarily traces the influence of the European gaze and cultural taste in the formation of the Latin American literary canon (considering many authors' lasting exile in European cities, such as Paris and Barcelona). An instance of this approach is her analysis of how the "Wandering Jew," a trope originated in Medieval Europe, migrated and emerged in Latin American fiction (a notable example is in Gabriel García Márquez's work). Her broader research interests also include translation, gender, and diasporic studies.

Gugenheim has been awarded the Ganzfried Family Travel (2023) and the Translation Initiative (2024) fellowships, as well as a Visiting Scholar position at the NYU Center for the Study of Antisemitism (2026). Her work has appeared in Cuadernos Judaicos (2022).

Department: Spanish and Portuguese