Jake J. Thomas Photo (c) 2023
Dr. Ariane Helou is a scholar whose research focuses on drama, music, and poetry in early modern Italy, England, and France; her secondary research field is culinary history. Dr. Helou was a faculty member at UCLA in the department of French & Francophone Studies, and at UC Santa Cruz (where she also earned her PhD in Literature) in Theater Arts, Classical Studies, and French. She currently works as a grant writer at Caltech’s Beckman Institute.
Dr. Helou has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies; the Huntington Library; and UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library & Center for 17th– and 18th-Century Studies, among others. She has published award-winning original scholarship on Italian Renaissance drama and musical performance, Shakespeare studies, and other topics.
She is also a translator, a dramaturg. and a performing artist whose background spans early music, theater, and opera. Dr Helou currently sings with the choral ensemble Artes Vocales, where she also served as Founding Artistic Producer (2018-2023), and is an Affiliated Scholar of LA Opera (2020-present); was on the dramaturgy staff of the Santa Cruz Shakespeare festival (2012-2020, 2023); and is Dramaturg/Producer of the Los Angeles-based theater company Collaborative Artists Bloc.
ARIANE NADA HELOU 