معرفی
Rosemarie Roberts serves as the Dayton Professor of Dance and Chair of the Department of Dance at Connecticut College, where she has been faculty since 2007. She additionally holds roles as Bodies/Embodiment Pathway Coordinator and Co-Director of Residential Education Fellows, integrating her expertise in Afro-diasporic dance traditions with social justice frameworks across institutional initiatives.
Her educational credentials include:
- B.A. from Hunter College (Summa Cum Laude)
- Enroute Master's Degree from Queens College, City University of New York
- Ph.D. in Social Personality Psychology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York
Professor Roberts' research interrogates how dance functions as embodied knowledge production, particularly through Afro-Caribbean forms like Cuban, Haitian, Puerto Rican, and Brazilian traditions. Working in the Katherine Dunham tradition, she examines race, power, and difference through social psychological and anthropological lenses, with specific focus on how performance spaces become sites for critical resistance and cultural memory. Her methodological approach combines participatory action research with choreographic processes as pedagogies of embodiment.
Her publication trajectory reveals consistent thematic evolution toward critical race theory applications in performance studies, with increasing emphasis on youth discourse and anti-racist frameworks. The articles demonstrate interdisciplinary reach across education, anthropology, and psychology journals, consistently positioning the concert stage as a public scholarship venue where choreographic processes generate critical engagement with racialized embodiment.
Her scholarly recognition includes:
- 1997 Ethnic Dance Award for commitment to teaching and performing African diasporic dance
- National Science Foundation Minority Graduate Fellowship
- Leslie Glass Foundation Fellowship
- American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Dissertation Award
Professor Roberts has secured significant research funding including a CONNSharp grant supporting her project "Locating Action, Power, and Knowledge Through the Body in Hip Hop Dance," which examines knowledge production through embodied processes. Her mentorship extends to collaborative publications with students on race and youth discourse, and she has directed educational programs at institutions including Yale University, Mount Holyoke College, and Howard University. Current advising focuses on embodiment methodologies within dance education contexts.
She leads the "Locating Action, Power, and Knowledge Through the Body in Hip Hop Dance" research initiative, which investigates how hip hop performance enacts social justice frameworks. This work builds on her prior Cultural Traditions Program directorship at Jacob's Pillow, where she developed community-engaged performance research models examining race, power, and knowledge transmission through embodied practice.
