The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance announces that Rebecca Rossen will join the Department of Dance as a professor and department chair in January 2027. Rossen is a dance historian and performance scholar whose work focuses on the aesthetic, cultural, historical, and political meanings and effects of dance and physical performance, as well as the interrelationships among performance, embodiment, site, memory, and history.
Rossen comes to U-M from the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas, where she served as a faculty member from 2008 to 2026 and as head of the Performance as Public Practice graduate program. In 2015, she received the UT Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award.
“Rebecca is a distinguished dance scholar, deeply respected across the field, and an accomplished academic leader,” said David Gier, SMTD dean and Paul C. Boylan Collegiate Professor of Music. “As she steps into the role of chair of the Department of Dance, she will be a strong advocate for our talented faculty and students and a vital contributor to SMTD and the broader university. Her personal connections to Michigan are especially meaningful as U-M deepens its commitment to its public mission and societal impact. I am delighted to welcome Rebecca to SMTD and look forward to supporting her as the department builds on its rich history and extraordinary potential.”
Rossen has deep Michigan roots: she was born and raised in Detroit. She began her dance training with Iacob Lascu of Marygrove College and took her first modern dance class with U-M alumna Veta Goler at the National Music Camp. Her parents were engaged in Detroit’s cultural and political life: her mother directed publications at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and her father, a U-M alumnus, was general counsel for the United Auto Workers.
Rossen is the author of Moving Memories: Representations of the Holocaust in Dance and Performance (Oxford University Press, 2026) and Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Oxford University Press, 2014). The latter book won the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize and a special citation from the de la Torre Bueno Book Prize, both awarded by the Dance Studies Association.
She has published scholarly articles in Dance Research Journal, Feminist Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, and Theatre Journal; her public scholarship has appeared in Dance Teacher, The Forward, and Sightlines. Her writing has also been published in numerous anthologies, including the forthcoming Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories, as well as The Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, and “You Should See Yourself”: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture.
She has received several grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, most notably a 2023–24 NEH Fellowship. From 2015 through 2018, she led the Dance Studies Association’s editorial board and served as editor of its book series, Studies in Dance. She is proud to have been part of the team that moved the series to the University of Michigan Press, where it continues to thrive.
“I am thrilled to join the University of Michigan and SMTD’s Department of Dance, a vibrant community invested in exploration and innovation in dancing, dancemaking, and dance research,” Rossen said. “During my visit last spring, I was impressed by the creativity and talent of the students I met, as well as the artistry and expertise that the faculty bring to the classroom, the department, and the field, and their unequivocal commitment to their students. I am excited by the opportunity to return to my home state as a department chair at the nation’s leading public research university and to have the chance to champion dance’s significant contribution to the arts, higher education, and society.”
Before entering academia, Rossen performed with Hedwig Dances, Loop Troop, and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, among others. Her choreography has been presented nationally and at venues throughout Chicago, her second hometown. She was cofounder of Chicago’s first fringe dance festival, the Movable Beast, and served as codirector from 1998 to 2000. During her years as a dancer, she taught at many local dance centers, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Columbia College Chicago, the Gus Giordano Dance School, the Hubbard Street/Lou Conte Dance Studio, and Links Hall.
Rossen earned a BA from Wesleyan University and a PhD in theatre and drama, with an emphasis on dance studies, from Northwestern University.