Jessica Ray Herzogenrath

Instructional Assistant Professor, History

Jessica Ray Herzogenrath researches U.S. cultural history, in particular popular performances, drawing on her experience performing, choreographing, and teaching dance. She explores how embodied practices simultaneously reveal long-established cultural traditions and hold the potential for immediate change. Her manuscript-in-progress — Modern Folk: Dancing American in the Midwest Metropolis, 1890-1940 — examines how women deployed folk dance in the process of Americanization in Progressive-era Chicago. In 2019, she delved into the archives of dance writer Ann Barzel as the 2018-2019 John S. Aubrey Fellow at the Newberry Library (Chicago). She also writes for Dance Source Houston and serves as the (founding) board president of the Houston-based dance company Social Movement Contemporary Dance.