Debra H. Sowell

Debra Hickenlooper Sowell is a dance historian and professor of humanities and theater history at Southern Virginia University. She retired as an associate professor of humanities in the Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2011. She received her B.A. cum laude and with High Honors from the Honors Program at BYU, where she majored in humanities and emphasized French literature. She gained her M.A. in theater history from Tufts University, where she worked with Peter Arnott, and her Ph.D. in performance studies from New York University, where she wrote her dissertation under the supervision of the distinguished dance critic Marcia Siegel. She danced with the BYU Theatre Ballet and later with the Cambridge Court Dancers, where she studied and performed Renaissance dance with Ingrid Brainard. She enjoyed courses in dance history under Jeanette Roosevelt and Walter Sorell at Columbia University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar in theatrical dance under the supervision of Selma Jeanne Cohen, who became her mentor. Cohen later edited the International Encyclopedia of Dance, to which Sowell contributed articles on Carlotta Brianza, the Christensen Brothers(Lew Christensen, Harold Christensen and Willam Christensen), and Nicola Guerra, as well as approximately 50 illustrations with accompanying captions for the six-volume encyclopedia.