Emily Hawk, Ph.D.
20th Century U.S. Cultural Historian
Visiting Assistant Professor, Dickinson College
hawke@dickinson.edu
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Honorable Mention, 2025 Ribuffo Dissertation Prize—praised for “discerning and distinctive contribution to U.S. intellectual and cultural history.”
Research
Research
Overview
Overview
I study Black modern dance as a form of intellectual and political work. Drawing on methods from intellectual, urban, and cultural history, my research explores how choreographers such as Alvin Ailey, Geoffrey Holder, Eleo Pomare, and Carole Johnson intervened in debates over race, cultural identity, and civic engagement by performing beyond conventional theatrical settings and reaching audiences nationwide. Working from company papers, grant proposals, audience correspondence, oral histories, and state and foundation records, I argue that Black modern dance functioned not simply as aesthetic expression but as a rigorous mode of civic thought and action in twentieth-century America.
Book-in-Progress
Book-in-Progress
Embodying the Movement: Black Modern Dance and Community Engagement in New York City and Beyond expands the story of the post-war “dance boom” by centering African American choreographers as public intellectuals. Five chapters move from magazine debates over the phrase “Black dance” to community performances on Harlem’s Dancemobile, Rod Rodgers’s lecture-demonstrations for schoolchildren, Alvin Ailey’s televised collaborations with Duke Ellington, and the advent of Black dance on Broadway . Across these sites, I show how artists built an institutional infrastructure – funding networks, magazines, touring circuits – that democratized access to their art and advanced national conversations about race and cultural expression.
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
“‘Sport Becoming an Art’,” Journal of African American History (in press, 2025).
“Dance Across Departments,” Dance Chronicle special issue on pedagogy (in press, 2025).
“Civic Education and Artistic Innovation on NYC’s Dancemobile, 1967-1988,” Journal of Urban History 51:3 (2023).
“The Choreographer as Intellectual: Alvin Ailey’s Ideas about Black Modern Dance,” Journal of American Culture 44:3 (2021).
Research Support
Research Support
My work has been funded by the Library of Congress (Kluge Fellowship 2025-26), the Smithsonian Institution, Emory University, and the Rockefeller Archive Center, among others.
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