Rebecca Rovit

Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Florida State University
Script Analysis, Theatre History, Modern European Drama, Jewish Artistic production in Nazi Germany, Theatre and Genocide.

Rebecca Rovit joined the KU faculty in August 2009. She teaches Script Analysis, Theatre History, and topics related to historiography, German theatre, and performance and genocide at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Dr. Rovit’s area of research expertise explores the cultural heritage of the Holocaust (1933-1945), including art produced by prisoner-artists in situ and the role of the performing arts under duress: within Nazi Germany, and in ghetto and camp settings.  Her micro-history, The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin is forthcoming in September 2012 with Iowa University Press (Studies in Theatre History and Culture, ed. Thomas E. Postlewait).  She co-edited (with Alvin Goldfarb), Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs (The Johns Hopkins UP, 1999), a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her publications appear in such journals as American Theatre, PAJ, TDR, Theatre Survey, and The Journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In spring 2013, she will guest edit a special section of the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism entitled “Witnessing History: Performing Trauma.”

Dr. Rovit has received research fellowships from the American Philosophical Society; the ACLS, the U.S Holocaust Memorial Museum; the Jewish Memorial Foundation for Culture; and the Deutscher Akademische Austauchsdienst. She recently received a KU New Faculty Research Grant for a new project on post-1945 German theatre and performance. Besides lecturing independently in the U.S. and in Europe, she has taught courses in theatre history, play analysis, and modern drama at Illinois State University, and Indiana University.

She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History from Florida State University, an MA in German language and literature from the University of Virginia, and a BA from Bucknell University.

Department of Theatre
Murphy Hall
1530 Naismith Drive
Lawrence, KS 66045-3102
785-864-6295
785-864-5251
rrovit@ku.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Link to The Jewish Kulturbund Theatre Company in Nazi Berlin (see page 19)