Lynn Theresa Garafola (born December 12, 1946) is an American dance historian, linguist, critic, curator, lecturer, and educator. A prominent researcher and writer with broad interests in the field of dance history, she is acknowledged as the leading expert on the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev (1909–1929), the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance.
Early life and education
Born in New York City, Lynn spent her early years in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Her parents were Louis Salvatore Garafola, a printer, and Rose Jean (Marchione) Garafola, whose surname is a Southern Italian corruption of garofalo, meaning "carnation." As a child Lynn studied ballet and violin with teachers from the Armenian diaspora, including Madame Seda Suny, a well-known dance teacher in the neighborhood, and spent leisure time in reading, knitting and stitchery, acting, and swimming. Madame Seda, who was always considered "Russian" by her students, introduced the young girl to the art form that would become one of the guiding passions of her life. After six years of elementary school, she entered the seventh grade of Hunter College High School, an elite, all-girls school with high academic standards and a strong arts program. There, her Latin teacher, Irving Kizner, sparked her facility in languages, which would become another lifelong interest. While in high school, she also studied modern dance with Alice Halpern and, in her senior year, took occasional classes in "jazz dance" with Alvin Ailey, which was really Horton technique accompanied by drumming.
Upon graduation from high school in 1964, Garafola found her first summer job, as a salesgirl at Arnold Constable's flagship store in New York, the "Palace of Trade" on Broadway at West 19th Street. That autumn, she entered the freshman class of Barnard College (class of 1968), the prestigious women's college associated with Columbia University, on Morningside Heights in Manhattan. As a budding linguist and an amateur actress, she became attached to faculty members who were émigrés from the Spanish Civil War and who, to Garafola's delight, staged plays in Spanish, in which she often appeared. Besides Spanish, her major field, her course of study included classes in French and Italian as well as general academics. Throughout her college years, she continued to study dance and to take part in theatrical productions. She graduated from Barnard with a baccalaureate degree (A.B.) in 1968.
The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, Lynn spent the following year in Quito, Ecuador, studying Latin American literature and teaching English. Then, after a year in the American Midwest and some time in Mexico, she returned to New York, where she found employment in 1970 as a staff translator at the Berlitz Translation Service in midtown Manhattan. Deciding to pursue graduate studies, she entered the doctoral program in Spanish at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. She soon switched her field from Spanish to comparative literature, which she found more intellectually stimulating, and began regular attendance at dance performances in the city. She eventually earned a master's degree (M.Phil.) in 1979. More years of study followed, as her interest in dance history grew to become her primary focus. With a dissertation entitled "Art and Enterprise in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes," she earned a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in 1985.
Academic career
While still a graduate student, Garafola began her academic career in February 1975 as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brooklyn College, a job she held until June 1977. After a hiatus of almost ten years, she was again a part-time lecturer, back uptown at Columbia University during the summers of 1985 and 1986. In September 1988, she was appointed adjunct assistant professor in the School of the Arts at Columbia, and in September 2000, she moved across Broadway at West 116th Street to the Department of Dance at Barnard, where she was an adjunct professor on a half-time schedule. In July 2003, she became a term professor, and in September 2006 she was named a full professor of dance. Granted tenure in 2007, she occupied this position until July 2017, when she became Professor Emerita. She served as co-chair of the Department of Dance at Barnard from July 2014 to July 2016. Until her retirement, she was a non-voting member of the Department of History at Columbia and a faculty member of the university's Harriman Institute, which is devoted to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies. She continues to serve on orals and dissertation committees in History and Theatre, and remains active in the Harriman Institute.