Dr. Jessica Friedman, PhD

headshot of Dr. Jessica Friedman

Dance Lecturer
School of Music and Dance
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts

SDSU

Email

Primary Email: [email protected]

Building/Location

5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182

Files

Bio

Jessica Friedman, PhD, is a dance and theatre scholar and curator. Her scholarship has been published in venues including Theatre Survey, Dance Chronicle, and Border Crossings. She is Co-Editor of forthcoming anthologies Designers & Crafters in the Women’s Innovations in Theater, Dance, and Performance series (Bloomsbury 2026) and Embodied Dramaturgy: Liminal Movements in Dance and Theatre (Routledge 2026). Her book project Modern Dance in Crisis: Women’s Remaking American Modern Dance in the 1940s examines choreographers’ negotiations of transnational crisis. Friedman’s recent co-curated exhibition, Dance to Belong: A History of Dance at 92NY, shows a history of activist modern dance.

Education

  • Ph.D. Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, Evanston IL.
  • M.A. Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama, Northwestern University, Evanston IL.
  • B.A. Ethnic Studies. Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Columbia University, New York, NY.

Areas of Specialization

  • Dance theory
  • Dance historiography
  • Race and gender in modern dance
  • Dance and Theatre Dramaturgy
  • Dance and Theatre Curation

Awards & Honors

  • American Theatre and Drama Society Contingent Faculty Research and Travel Grant Award, 2025.
  • Association for Theatre in Higher Education, High Teaching Load Research Grant for Contingent Faculty, 2025.
  • Performance Studies Focus Group, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Contingent Faculty Scholar Award, 2025.
  • Library of Congress Annegret Fauser and Tim Carter Fellowship, 2025.
  • American Society for Theatre Research Cambridge University Press Prize Honorable Mention, 2024.
  • American Theatre and Drama Society Contingent Faculty Research and Travel Grant Award Runner Up, 2024.
  • University of California, Santa Barbara, Non-Senate Faculty Professional Development Grant, 2023.
  • American Society for Theatre Research Jessica Berson Dance Research Assistance Fund Grant, 2023.
  • American Society for Theatre Research David Keller Travel Grant Award, 2023.
  • American Society for Theatre Research Selma Jeanne Cohen Presentation Award, 2022.
  • International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar Award Runner Up, 2022.
  • Northwestern University Fellowship in Leadership, 2022.
  • Renate Voris Fellowship, 2021.
  • New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, 2019.
  • 92nd Street YM-YWHA Archival Research Fellowship, 2019.
  • Dance Studies Association Selma Jeanne Cohen Award, 2018.

Courses

  • Dance 181: Introduction to Dance
  • Dance 380: Dance History: Contemporary Global Contexts
  • Dance 481W: Performance Writing

Publications

BOOKS:

  • Friedman, Jessica. Modern Dance in Crisis: Women Remaking Modern Dance in the 1940s. Forthcoming, Under Advanced Contract.
  • Friedman, Jessica, Carolina D Santo, and Greer Crawley (eds). Designers & Crafters. Vol. 3. Women’s Innovations in Theater, Dance, and Performance. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2026.
  • Friedman, Jessica and Telory Arendell. Embodied Dramaturgy: Liminal Movements in Dance and Theatre. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, forthcoming 2026.

PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES:

  • Friedman, Jessica. “Recruiting Places: Pearl Primus’s Plans for Global Activism through Community-Engaged Dance Theatre.” Theatre Survey 65, no. 3: 208-26.
  • Friedman, Jessica. “Universalizing the Specific: Janet Collins’s Spirituals and Genesis.” Dance Chronicle 45, no. 3: 187–206.

COMMISSIONED ARTICLES:

  • Friedman, Jessica. “Dances about War.” Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive, forthcoming 2025.
  • Friedman, Jessica and Elizabeth W. Son. “Teaching Public Humanities in Practice.” In Preparing Publicly Engaged Scholars: A Guide for Innovation in Graduate Education. New York: American Council for Learned Societies, 2024.

COMMISSIONED BOOK CHAPTERS:

  • Friedman, Jessica. “Finding Meaning in Abstract Modern Dance: Jean Erdman’s Embodied Dramaturgy.” In Embodied Dramaturgy: Liminal Movements in Dance and Theatre, edited by Jessica Friedman and Telory Arendell. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, forthcoming 2026.
  • Friedman, Jessica. “Modern Dance at the Arts Club: Merce Cunningham, Jean Erdman, and the Chicago Avant-Garde.” In Dancing on the Third Coast, edited by Susan Manning and Lizzie Leopold. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming  2026.
  • Friedman, Jessica. “Dancing Sharecroppers: Jane Dudley’s and Pearl Primus’s Border Crossing Blues.” In Border Crossings: Exile and American Dance, 1900 - 1955, edited by Ninotchka Bennahum and Rena Heinrich. New York: New York Public Library Press, 2023.

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP AND BOOK REVIEWS:

  • Friedman, Jessica. Book review of Jacqueline Shea Murphy’s Dancing Indigenous Worlds: Choreographies of Relation. Great Plains Quarterly, 44.1 (Winter 2024): 106-7.
  • Friedman, Jessica. Book review of Carrie Noland’s Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary. Dance Research Journal. 53, no. 1 (April 2021): 79–81
  • Friedman, Jessica. “Reconstructing 1940s Dances of Sophie Maslow and Pearl Primus from the Archives.” The New York Public Library (blog). https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/02/18/reconstructing-1940s-dances-sophie-maslow-and-pearl-primus-archives.