F&M Stories

In 1984, Dr. Lynn Matluck Brooks was hired to start a dance program at Franklin & Marshall, housed in the Department of Drama. Gordon Wickstrom, then department chair, charged Professor Brooks with "the sensual salvation of our students." Stunned by the remark at the time, Brooks went on to embrace—and revise—that charge. She built the Dance Program from the ground up, establishing a minor within three years, and later a major. Professor Brooks has upheld dance as a serious and vital mode of study and a portal to other disciplines—an exemplary liberal arts foundation. Valuing integration of theory and practice in dance study, she opens dance to everyone; these priorities remain at the foundation of F&M's Dance Program.

Professor Brooks has been a mentor to countless students and faculty, an exemplary leader, and a bold innovator at the College. Chairing the Department of Theatre, Dance & Film for 11 years, she spearheaded efforts that brought Roschel Performing Arts Center from vision to realization. In 2003, she was named the Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of Humanities, and in 2007, received the College's Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship. In 2015, she received the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, placing her in the small group of faculty to receive both the Lindback and Dewey awards—inevitable for someone who so gracefully balances scholarship and teaching.

Dr. Brooks holds bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Temple University. She is a Certified Movement Analyst through the Laban-Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Her doctoral research was supported by a Fulbright/Hayes Grant for study in Spain. She has also held grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has participated as both NEH fellow and faculty member in the Aston Magna Academies.

Dr. Brooks is an esteemed scholar with deep knowledge of the field; her comprehensive research has been published in books and scholarly articles, primarily on dance history subjects. She has written performance reviews for Dance Magazine and thINKingDANCE, served as editor of Dance Research Journal (1994-1999), and co-edited Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts ( 2007-2017). She has served on the boards of the World Dance Alliance, the Society for Dance History Scholars, and the Congress on Research in Dance. Professor Brooks has created many dances for the Dance Program at F&M and for other groups. Her sense of language, on the page and on the stage, is exquisite and impeccable.

Through dance, Professor Brooks has continued to demonstrate and embody that the intellectual and kinesthetic are intertwined, inseparable. As she has passed her wisdom to students, she also beautifully illustrates what lifelong learning looks like. Professor Brooks' legacy at F&M will live through the outstanding Dance Program she has built. In an increasingly technologized world, her vision of "sensual salvation" continues to resonate in our studios and on our stage.

Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of Humanities and Dance Lynn Matluck Brooks