Education
PhD, University at Albany
About
Camelia Lenart is a lecturer in the University at Albany's Department of History.
Dr. Lenart completed her PhD at UAlbany, where her thesis “State of the Art/Art of State: The European Tours of Martha Graham and Her Dance Company, 1950-1967” received a Distinguished Dissertation Prize. Her research — which is at the interface of dance, diplomatic and cultural history — was supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship from the University College London.
Dr. Lenart's work has been published in edited volumes and in Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal, H-Diplo and The European Journal of American Studies. She is working on a book focusing on the European Tours of Martha Graham and Her Company (1950-1967) and a manuscript about Alvin Ailey’s Cold War tours to Eastern Europe.
She received a Dance Chronicle Founding Editors’ Award for her article “Dancing Art and Politics beyond the Iron Curtain: Martha Graham’s 1962 Tour to Yugoslavia and Poland.”
Dr. Lenart works with the Dance Research Journal in several capacities — serving as an Editorial Board member and a Book Reviews Co-editor, and working with the editorial team finalize reviews for publication.
She has also served as the advisor for UAlbany's Dance Council since 2017.
Dr. Lenart is a member of the following organizations:
Research Interests
Dance History, Intellectual History, and American Foreign Relations
Publications
Selected Publications
- Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America by Rebekah J. Kowal (review), Dance Research Journal, vol. 53, no. 1 (2021): 83-86.
- Dancing Barefoot and Politicizing Dance at the White House: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham's Collaboration During the Rise of Fascism in Europe, in Eleanor Roosevelt's Views on Diplomacy and Democracy. The Global Citizen, ed. Dario Fazzi (London: Palgrave, 2020).
- Resisting Trauma and Keeping Hope Alive: Romanian Modern Dance during the Complicated Twentieth Century, Dance Chronicle, vol. 42, no. 3 (2019): 342-372.
- Dancing Art and Politics beyond the Iron Curtain: Martha Graham's 1962 Tour to Yugoslavia and Poland, Dance Chronicle, vol. 39, no. 2 (2016): 197-217.
- A Trustworthy Collaboration: Eleanor Roosevelt and Martha Graham's Pioneering of American Cultural Diplomacy, European Journal of American Studies, 12-1, Article 5 (2017).
- Martha Graham's Modern Dance and Its Impact on France during the Fifties, New Readings, vol. 9 (2008), Cardiff, UK.
Talks & Presentations
- “From the White House to the World: Martha Graham and the Indeterminate American Anti-Fascist Movement of the 1930s,” Dance Studies Association Conference, George Washington University, June 2025.
- “Belonging, Mending and Expanding Black Cultural Diplomacy beyond the Iron Curtain: Judith Jamison’s Tour to Romania in 1977.”The Society of the Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Conference, Washington D.C., June 2025.
- “Modern Women, Modern Dance and the Re-bordering of the Cold War Diplomacy in 1957 Berlin,” Symposium Culture & International History," John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, December 2024.
- “Judith Jamison's American Black Diplomacy in the Inverted Europe of the Cold War,” Dance Studies Association Conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 2024.
- Black Bodies, American Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War: Alvin Ailey Companys Tours to Communist Romania during the 1970s, Society for Historians of the American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Conference (June 2022)
- “Forgetting While Forgotten: Romanian Modern Dance During the Complicated Twentieth Century,” Studies in Dance Seminar, Columbia University, January 2022.
- Revelations and Negotiations, Political Agendas, and Otherness in Alvin Aileys Company Tours to Romania in the 1970s, Dance Studies Association (DSA) Annual Conference (October 2021)
- “The Tale of Two Eleanors and Cold War Arts’ Patronage: Martha Graham’s Collaboration with Eleanor Roosevelt and the Making of American Cultural Diplomacy,” Rothermere Institute, University of Oxford, June 2019.
- “Making Dance, Moving On, and Finding ‘The Place’: Martha Graham’s Tour to England in 1963,” Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, June 2018.
Instruction & Advising
Courses
- AHIS 100: American Political and Social History 1
- AHIS 101: American Political and Social History 2
- AHIS 131: History of European Civilization 2
- AHIS 256: Women in European History
- AHIS 264: Art, Music and History 2
- AHIS 288: Topics in European History
- AHIS 290: Topics in American History
- AHIS 310: History of Women in the U.S.
- AHIS 344: Europe 1914-1945
- AHIS 351: History of Germany
- AHIS 356: The World at War 1939-45
- TUNI 250: Honors Advanced Topics
- Independent Study in History (Research)
Additional Information
Awards & Honors
- Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award (2025-2026)
- Torch Award, UAlbany (2025)
- Dance Studies Association Fellow (2025)
- President’s Award for Leadership - Outstanding Student Organization Advisor Award, UAlbany (April 2024)
- Faculty of the Year Award, Student Association, UAlbany (2021)
- Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Arts and Sciences, UAlbany
- Dance Chronicle Founders' Award
- Distinguished Dissertation Prize, College of Arts and Sciences, UAlbany (2015)
- Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Service & Outreach
Service for UAlbany's College of Arts & Sciences
- Committee Member, Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Campus Climate Committee, November 2024
- Committee Member, Excellence in Teaching Award Committee, November 2017
- Panel moderator, Undergraduate Research Conference, April 28, 2017
- Committee Member, Search Committee Modern Germany position, Department of History, November 2016-March 2017
Service for the Profession
- Organizer of the Panel for The Society of the Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR)Arlington, Virginia Conference, 2025; Title: “Belonging not Excluded: National, International and Transnational Women Diplomacy through War and Peace during the 20th Century.”
- Participant - Summer Institute “Women in the World,” organized by the Society for Historians of the American Foreign Relations Conference, New Orleans, June, 2022
- Moderator - Writing Circle Project Dancing the Long Nineteenth Century - 6 months, March to September 2022.
- Organizer of the Panel: Dinners, Diaries, and Combat: Expanding and Ungendering American Diplomacy at Home and Abroad, Society for Historians of the American Foreign Relations Conference, New Orleans, June, 2020 (presentations via Zoom.)
- Organized the panel “Arts and Cultural Diplomacy: Exchanging and Changing the ‘Heart and Mind’ of the Cold War,” Society for Historians of the American Foreign Relations Conference, Washington, DC, June 19-22, 2019
- Chair of the panel "Intelligence and Foreign Policy in the 1970s", June 15, 2018, Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Conference (HOTCUS), Cambridge University, UK
- Chair of the panel, "Representing Conflict through Dance: a rule-based approach to studying and creating choreography," Dance Studies Association Conference, Valetta, Malta, July 8, 2018
- Chair of the panel “Dance and Memory,” Dance in the Age of Forgetfulness Conference, Royal Holloway University, London, UK, 19 April 2018
- Chair of the panel “Social Values in Social dance,” Congress of Research in Dance and Society of Dance History Scholars Joint Conference, Transmissions and Traces: Rendering Dance, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, October 21, 2017
- Chair of two panels, “Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe and Identities” and “The Cities: Transition and Change in Urban Image Construction in Central and Eastern Europe," Third Euroacademia International Conference, 28-29 March 2014, Berlin, Germany
- Chair of the Art Panel at 2008 Popular Culture/American Culture Conference, San Francisco, California, March 19-22, 2008