My dissertation titled “Dance as Translation: Establishing French Opera, Ballet, and Circus in Early North America, 1780-1810” is the first comprehensive study of a dynamic and vibrant tradition of French opera and ballet that fascinated Northern American audiences in the eighteenth century. Beginning in New Orleans and stopping in such cities as Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Montreal, and Quebec City, I follow the circulation of musical works, the ballet masters, and star performers, tracing the artistic networks, and performance practices that necessarily varied from one city to another. I explore the relationship between music and dance in French and English-speaking communities as a complicated yet integral means of expression that allows us to understand the social, political, and economic story of opera in early America.
In addition to research, I am passionate about teaching and participating in initiatives that champion equal access to education. I currently teach with the Prison Teaching Initiative (PTI) which provides post-secondary education to incarcerated students in New Jersey. For PTI, I have taught A Survey of Western Music (MUSC 102) and A Survey of Jazz Music (MUSC 105). At Princeton, I have precepted for Musical Modernism (MUS 240) and History of the Ballet (MUS 223). While in Toronto, I taught Music History at the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and was a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto.
Recognition & awards:
Bombardier Graduate Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2020-2024
Margery Lowens Dissertation Research Fellowship, Society for American Music, 2023
Dianne Woest Fellowship in the Arts and Humanities, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2023-2024
Short-Term Research Fellowship at the Library for the Performing Arts, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, 2023-2024
Frank E. Taplin Endowed Fellowship in Music, Princeton University, 2019-2020
Publications:
Rouget, Elizabeth. “Living Things or the Collector as Audience: Animate Porcelain Dancers” in Reimagining the Ballet des Porcelaines, edited by Meredith Martin, 250-252. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2022.
Rouget, Elizabeth. “Listening to the Fur Trade: Soundways and Music in the British North American Fur Trade, 1760-1840 by Daniel Robert Laxer (Review)” in The Magazine of Early Music America, Nov. 2022.
Rouget, Elizabeth, and François Rouget. “Rabelais sur la scène du Théâtre du Vaudeville à la fin du Directoire. Le Quart-d’heure de Rabelais (Paris, Théâtre du Vaudeville, 25 nivôse, an VII)” in L’Année rabelaisienne, no. 5 (April 2021): 285-307.
