Dr. Penelope Hanstein

Cornaro Professor of Dance Emerita

Penelope Hanstein, Cornaro Professor of Dance Emerita, joined the dance faculty at Texas Woman’s University in 1977 and served as Chair of the Department of Dance from 1988-2011, and as Director of the School of the Arts, from 2006-2011.  She earned the Ph.D. in Art Education from The Ohio State University, the M.F.A. in Dance from the University of California, Irvine, where she studied with Eugene Loring and Antony Tudor, and the B.A. in Dance from Arizona State University. She is a Certified Teacher of Labanotation and an elected Fellow of the International Council of Kinetography-Laban.  From 1986-1998, Dr. Hanstein was a Visiting Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City, where she taught transdisciplinary courses as part of the summer faculty.  Having spent the majority of her career as a dancer and choreographer, she continues to teach and write from the perspective of the working artist.  Dr. Hanstein was named the 1995 National Dance Association Scholar, in 1998 and 2011 she presented the Keynote Address at the annual meetings of the Korean Society for Dance in Seoul, South Korea, and in 2002 was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Japan Society of Dance Research.  She is the co-editor/author of Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry and has presented her research on artistic process and the nature of artmaking in dance in numerous national and international forums.  

Dr. Hanstein has served as a program review, curriculum, and assessment consultant for numerous college and university dance programs throughout the U.S., and is nationally known for her work on the aesthetics of academic leadership.  Dr. Hanstein is a Past-President of the Congress on Research in Dance and has been active in university governance, having served as Speaker of the Faculty Senate and participated in a wide range of university policy, strategic planning, and cross-disciplinary initiatives.  During her tenure as Chair of the Department of Dance, TWU became an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Dance, the program was ranked one of the “Top Ten Dance Programs in the U.S. and Canada” by Dance Teacher magazine, and TWU became one of 21 member institutions of the Council of Dance Administrators.  

Drawing on her nearly 30 years of experience in doctoral education at TWU, in 2005 Dr. Hanstein designed the first Low-Residential Ph.D. in Dance program in the U.S. and the only program to focus specifically on theorizing artistic practice.  Along with dance faculty colleagues, the Low-Residential Ph.D. curriculum was developed and implemented in June 2006.  She served as a member of the National Association of Schools of Dance Commission on Accreditation from 2004 – 2012, chairing the Commission from 2009-2012, member of the NASD Board of Directors, and visiting evaluator for schools seeking national accreditation.  She currently serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the Dance Research Journal of Korea.  In April 2011 Dr. Hanstein was named the 2011 Cornaro Professor, the highest honor awarded to a Texas Woman’s University faculty member, and was granted emeritus status by the TWU Board of Regents.  After nearly 40 years in higher education, Dr. Hanstein retired in August 2011 in order to pursue new creative opportunities, among them, serving as a higher education consultant and co-teaching Artistic Process with Prof. Mary Williford-Shade in Fall 2013.