Ariel Nereson

PhD

Ariel Nereson.

Ariel Nereson

PhD

Ariel Nereson

PhD

Director of Graduate Studies
Associate Professor

Research Topics

Dance Studies, Musical Theatre, Critical Race Theory, Historiography, Queer Performance

Education

  • PhD, Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh
  • MA, English, University at Buffalo SUNY
  • BA, Dance, Choreography concentration; English, St. Olaf College

Bio

Ariel Nereson is Assistant Professor of Dance Studies. Dr. Nereson’s research is at the intersection of embodiment, identity, historiography, and cultural production. She uses dramaturgical and choreographic analyses to study movement-based performance as art and culture in order to understand how communities interpret movement as meaning. Her current book project is a study of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, contemporary US American performance, and the racial past. Her essays and reviews can be found in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Studies in Musical Theatre, and American Quarterly, among others. Her essays are also included in the collections Performing the Progressive Era and in The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance, and Cognitive Science. She is a 2018 recipient of a Targeted Research Fellowship from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) for her research on choreographers active across concert and Broadway stages in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is a past recipient of ASTR’s Selma Jeanne Cohen Conference Presentation Award (2016), Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize (2012), and Helen Krich Chinoy Dissertation Research Fellowship (2013).

Dr. Nereson is an active member and regularly presents at the conferences of the Dance Studies Association (DSA), Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), ASTR, and ATDS. She also serves on the editorial boards of Theatre Annual: A Journal of Theatre and Performance of the Americas, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and is a board member of the American Theatre & Drama Society. In the spring of 2019 Dr. Nereson co-edited, with Dr. Lezlie Cross, the ATDS-special issue of The Journal of American Drama and Theatre on “The Embodied Arts.”

At UB, Dr. Nereson teaches courses in the BFA and BA in Dance programs as well across the graduate programs including the MFA in Dance and the MA and PhD in Theatre & Performance as well as co-convenes the Humanities Institute Performance Research Workshop. Dr. Nereson is also a dramaturg and choreographer.