Faculty

Profile

I believe that teaching students to write well is the equivalent of teaching them to think well. For me, writing is the critical component of a liberal arts education; it enhances everything else.

Selection of courses taught:

• Nonfiction workshops
• Cultural Criticism
• Structure and Style (Introduction to Poetry, Drama, Fiction)
• Reflections of Race and Gender in American Culture: The Woman's Voice
• Choreography as Cultural Text: A History of Contemporary Western Dance
• Writing (and Reading) Paris
• Considering Clothes
• The Russian Revolution and the Arts

Degrees Held

MAT, Language and Literature, Harvard School of Education;
BA, Harvard University

Professional Affiliation

• English-Speaking Union Ambassador Book Award Committee
• Finnish American Women’s Network

Recent Publications

2015, Balanchine and the Lost Muse, Oxford University Press paperback

2013, Balanchine and the Lost Muse, Oxford University Press

2009, Autobiography of a Wardobe, Anchor/Vintage paperback

2008, Autobiography of a Wardrobe, Pantheon

2002, American Daughter, Random House paperback

2000, American Daughter, a memoir, Random House

2002, The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s, Anchor-Doubleday

1992, The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s, Knopf

1984, Where She Danced: The Birth of American Art Dance, University of California Press paperback

1979, Where She Danced, Knopf 

Research Interests

Nonfiction writing; Memoir Writing, Arts writing; Early 20th Century Russian (St. Petersburg) culture; Fabric and Clothing history.

Awards And Honors

• 2011-2012, Fellow, Leon Levy Center for Biography, CUNY
• 2009, Fellow, Likhachev Foundation, St. Petersbrug Russia
• 2004-5, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center Fellowship, NYPL
• 2002-3, National Arts Journalism Program, Senior Fellow
• Guggenheim, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation grants