• Refine Your Search:

Back to All Faculty and Staff

Hannah Schwadron

Associate Professor

School of Dance

Hannah Schwadron, Ph.D, MFA is Associate Professor of Dance History at Florida State University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in critical theory and dance history, choreography and performance as analytical curiosity and series play.

Her creative and scholarly research focuses on the intersections of identity and performance, agitprop parody and representational politics. Dancing and writing on these themes led to Hannah’s first book, The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-work in US Pop Culture (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), which tells the story of contemporary Jewish female performers across contemporary stage and screen genres. Related essays have been published in Dance and American Perspectives, Eds. Jen Atkins, Sally Sommer, and Tricia Young (University of Florida Press, forthcoming), Oxford Handbooks Online in Music, Ed. Alexander Rehding (2017), and the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics, Eds. Rebekah J. Kowal, Gerald Siegmund and the late Randy Martin (2017).

As part of ongoing theory-practice research, Hannah curates Field Studies, an annual creative development lab that allows performer-writers the space to workshop new projects with live audiences and peer review. Her collaborative dance film Klasse (2015), made with director Malia Bruker and a cast of middle school students, won the Production Grant from Dance Film Association (NYC), and has been shown at American Dance Festival (Durham and Boone), Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria, BC), Tiny Dance Film Fest (SF), Israelitische Töchterschule (Hamburg), Third Coast Dance Film Festival (Houston), where it won the Spirit of the Festival award, and ScreenDance Miami, where it won the Audience Choice award. Her newest dance film Between I and Thou (2017) documents an improvisation dance practice with collaborators from Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Germany, and the US on the subjects of migration, relationship, and exchange.  Hannah’s writing on the project has been published in Dancer-Citizen journal, Issues 3 (2016) and 4 (2017).

Education

Bachelors in American Civilization, Brown University

Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Choreography, University of California, Riverside

Doctor of Philosophy in Critical Dance Studies, University of California, Riverside

Teaching Areas

Choreography, Improvisation, Dance Theory/History, GFS

Research Areas

Choreography, Improvisation, Dance Theory/History, GFS

Additional Scholarly/Creative Works, Publications and Awards

2019 de la Torre Bueno® First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association for her book The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-work in US Pop Culture, published by Oxford University Press

Award of Merit, Docs without Borders Film Festival, 2017

“Dancing Exile: Issue 6 Project Update”. Dancer Citizen, 5, 2018

The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-Work in US Pop Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018

“Histories In Transit: Hamburg Stories in the Street”. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies13 (3), Online, 2017

“Lessons Learned from the Past: Follow Up”. Dancer Citizen4, Online, 2017

“Black Swan, White Nose”. In Rebekah Kowal, Randy Martin, Gerald Siegmund (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics (pp. 35). Oxford University Press, 2017

Scholarly/Creative Works

-Presented Jewish Dance Panel. Paper presented at CORD + SDHS: Transmissions and Traces: Rendering Dance, Ohio State University, Ohio State University. (National), 2017
-Presented Jewish Choreographer’s Workshop. Paper presented at Conney Conference, Conney Project on Jewish Arts, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. (National), 2017
-Presented “(Post)Migrant Theater: Now and Then”. Paper presented at German Studies Association Conference, German Studies Association, Atlanta, GA. (National), 2017
-Presented “I, Thou, and the Sphere of Betweenness: Dancing Difference in One Direction”. Paper presented at Congress of Research on Dance, Society of Dance History Scholars, Ohio State University. (National), 2017
-Presented “The Weight of Light Contradictions for Susan Rose and Dancers: An Exercise in Power and Parallel Processing”. Paper presented at Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, Popular Culture Association, San Diego, CA. (National), 2017
-Presented Making Choices. In German Campus Week. Presentation at the meeting of Center of Global Engagement, Florida State University. (National), 2017
-Presented Jewish Choreographers Lab. Presentation at Conney Conference on Jewish Arts, Conney Project on Jewish Arts, University of Wisconsin, Madison. (International), 2017
-Presented “Structures for Change: Dance Improvisation and Choreographic Choice-Making”. In Art4SocialJustice. Presentation at the meeting of Florida State University, William Johnson Building Department of Art Education. (National), 2018
-Sakhi [Documentary Interview with Dance Collaborator]. Hamburg, GE, 2017
-Between I and Thou [Dance Documentary]. Gangeviertel, Hamburg, GE, 2017
In Transit [Dance and Interview]. Hamburg, GE, 2016