Rebecca Rossen (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is a dancer, choreographer, and dance scholar whose research focuses on twentieth-century American dance, theatrical stagings of identity, and the relationship between theory and practice, scholarship and performance. Her current book project, Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance, investigates Jewish identity in select works by Jewish-American choreographers from the late 1920s to the present day. Additional publications include “The Jewish Man and His Dancing Shtick: Stock Characterization and Masculinity in Postmodern Dance,” a chapter in the anthology “You Should See Yourself!”: Jewish Identity and American Postmodern Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2006); and “Moving through the Interspace: Emio Greco/PC's Orfeo ed Euridice,” an essay in Opera Quarterly (Winter 2007). Her writing and reviews have also appeared in Dance Teacher Magazine and Dance Research Journal.
As a dancer, Rossen has performed with numerous companies and choreographers, including the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Hedwig Dances, the Cook County Theatre Department, Loop Troop, XSight! Performance Group, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Audio Gruppe (Germany), Annat Shamgar (Israel), and Baldanza (Italy). Rossen's choreography has been presented internationally at the HaBama Theater in Jerusalem, Israel; nationally at the Society of Dance History Scholars, Cleveland Experimental Dance Festival, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and the American College Dance Festival; and at venues throughout her hometown of Chicago. She has been awarded choreography grants from the City of Chicago, the Illinois Arts Council, and Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, as well as an artist's residency from the Arad Arts Project in Arad, Israel.
Prior to joining UT 's faculty in 2008 as an assistant professor, Rossen taught dance history and performance practice at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, George Mason University, and the Dance Center of Columbia College, as well as numerous Chicago-area dance studios.
