Lucille Toth pursues a dual career as both an artist and a scholar, with a strong focus on interdisciplinary postcolonial feminist performance.

Lucille Toth is an Associate Professor of French at OSU-Newark, affiliated with Ohio State Dance department. Trained in contemporary dance in France, she is the author of Danses et pandémies. Du SIDA à la COVID-19, which traces the links between contamination and dance in France and beyond in order to challenge contemporary cultural, political and artistic metaphors about movement.  Her research interests lie at the intersection of dance, literature, medical humanities, gender and migration studies. She co-edited Danse contemporaine et littérature (Paris: Centre National de la Danse, 2015) and has published in 50 Contemporary Choreographers, Tangence, French Cultural Studies, Percées, and H-France, among others. Her forthcoming publication, Embodied Narratives in the Health Humanities and Literary Studies, co-edited with Eftihia Mihelakis, will be released by the University of Toronto Press in 2025. 

In addition to being a scholar, Lucille Toth is also a choreographer and the founder and artistic director of On Board(hers), a dance project amplifies the testimonies of individuals in migration. On Board(hers) has been supported by different grants including a Coca Cola Critical Difference for Women Grant, and an Outreach Grant from OSU-Newark, and received good press coverage from NPR, Columbus Alive and WOSU, among others. As part of this project, Lucille Toth also gave a TEDxTalk in 2019 entitled “Yes she has an accent. Why don’t you?”

Lucille Toth also directed and performed in Laura Larson’s series of photographs City of Incurable Women, that challenges medical and cultural myths on women and hysteria.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books and co-edited books

• E. Mihelakis and L. Toth (eds.). Embodying Narratives in the Health Humanities and Literary Studies. University of Toronto Press, 2025. 
• Danses et pandémies. Du SIDA à la COVID-19: Montreal, Editions Nota Bene, coll. Varia, 2022. 

• M. Nachtergael and L. Toth (eds.). Danse contemporaine et littérature. Entre fictions et performances écrites. Pantin, Centre National de la Danse, “Recherche” Series, 2015.

Chapters, Articles, Reviews

• “Viral Dances. Moving in Times of a Pandemic.” Raw Writing in French and Francophone Studies. Ed. Loic Bourdeau and Hunter V. Capps, Lexington Books. 2022.

• Review of Hysteria in Performance, H-Net, 2022.

• “De la house au ballet : décolonisation de la danse en France.” Tangence. Montreal. 125-126 (2021).  
• “Mourad Merzaki,” 50 Contemporary Choreographers, Third Edition. Ed. J. Butterworth and L. Sanders, Routledge, 2021.
• “Praising Twerk. Why Aren’t We All Shaking Our Butt?” French Cultural Studies (May 2017) 291-302.

SELECTED CHOREOGRAPHIES / PERFORMANCES / CURATORIAL WORKS

• Founder and Artistic Director. On Board(hers). Since 2018.
• Jury member for 'Exhibition proposal review committee', Urban Arts Space, Columbus, OH, 2024. 
• Director, dancer and model. City of Incurable Women. Series of photographs by Laura Larson. 2017-2020.
• Director and performer. Repeat Pressure Until. Angela Meleca gallery, Columbus, OH. 2017.
• Dramaturge. Trois décennies d’amour cerné (Three Decades of Fenced-in Love.) A contemporary ballet co-written with French choreographer Thomas Lebrun) 2013.

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