Rate My Professor Lucille Toth

Lucille Toth is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University-Newark campus, affiliated with the Ohio State Dance Department. She earned her PhD in French from the University of Southern California in 2014, with a dissertation entitled “Danser la maladie, contaminer la beauté: a viral approach to the (choreo)graphed body.” Additional degrees include an M.A. in French-language Literatures from the Université de Montréal (2007), a B.A. in Performing Arts from Université Paul-Valéry (2005), and a Degree in Contemporary Dance from the Anne-Marie Poras School of Dance (2003). She has served as Coordinator of the French Program at OSU-Newark since 2017. Previously, she was Director of the Modern Languages Resource Center and Visiting Assistant Professor in French at Scripps College and Claremont McKenna College from 2014 to 2017, and held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Dance Studies at Stanford University in 2014.

Toth's scholarship explores the intersections of dance studies, French and Francophone literature, medical humanities, gender and sexuality, and migration studies. Her monograph, Danses et pandémies. Du SIDA à la COVID-19, was published by Éditions Nota Bene in 2022. She co-edited Embodied Narratives in the Health Humanities and Literary Studies (University of Toronto Press, 2025) and Danse contemporaine et littérature. Entre fictions et performances écrites (Centre National de la Danse, 2015). Notable articles include “Praising Twerk. Why Aren’t We All Shaking Our Butt?” in French Cultural Studies (2017), “De la house au ballet: décolonisation de la danse en France” in Tangence (2021), and “Mourad Merzaki” in 50 Contemporary Choreographers (Routledge, 2021). Toth has received the Scholarly Accomplishment Award (2021), OSU-Newark Service Award (2020), Havens Faculty Research Prize (2018), and various grants including the Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Research Grant (2018) and an Outreach Grant from OSU-Newark (2020). She founded and directs On Board(hers), a dance company based on immigrant testimonies, which has garnered media attention from NPR and WOSU, and delivered a TEDxOhioStateUniversity talk in 2019 titled “Yes she has an accent. Why don’t you?” Additionally, she edited a special issue of Miroirs/Miroir on fluids and taboos (2016).