Amy Rodgers

Amy Rodgers’ research encompasses a wide historical and theoretical terrain in the fields of audience studies, adaptation studies, and interdisciplinary influences across artistic and narrative forms, such as dance, music, literature, film and media. Her first book, A Monster with a Thousand Hands: The Discursive Spectator in Early Modern England was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018, and she has published numerous articles on Shakespearean adaptation in film, television, dance, and music. Currently, she is working on a monograph with dance critic Leigh Witchel on ballet and critical theory entitled Embodying the Signifier: Classical Ballet, Critical Theory and Performance. At Mount Holyoke, she teaches classes on film and performance history and theory, adaptation studies, gender and sexuality in film and media, Shakespeare and performance, and the history of trauma on stage and screen. In addition to her work at Mount Holyoke, she is a co-founder of the Shakespeare and Dance Project and the director of the Bread Loaf School of English’s Global Humanities Seminar at Monterey, CA. Before attending college, Rodgers was a member of the Washington, Atlanta, and Joffrey Ballet companies, where she performed numerous roles from the classical repertory as well as in ballets by George Balanchine, John Cranko, Gerald Arpino, Choo San Goh, Dennis Nahat, Fernand Nault, George Pazik, Toni Pimble, Jerome Robbins, and Twyla Tharp.