Dr. Rivera-Servera comes to UT Austin from Northwestern University, where he chaired the Department of Performance Studies and the Department of Theatre in the School of Communication. He knows the College of Fine Arts and UT well as the first graduate of the Performance as Public Practice Ph.D. program in UT Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance. He returns to Austin as the first Latino dean in the history of the College of Fine Arts.
Dr. Rivera-Servera is a prolific interdisciplinary scholar whose research explores the ways the arts contribute to social transformation and help us become a more intentionally collaborative and ethical society. His publications focus on creative ethnography, new work development and Black and Latinx arts and cultures in North America and the Caribbean. His scholarship documents a wide array of performance practices, ranging from theatre and concert dance to social dance, fashion and speech. He is the author of Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2012).
We have been through a period of tremendous change and growth during the last 14 years, and the college will continue to lean into the future under Dean Rivera-Severa’s leadership. I’m too immodest to wonder that the College of Fine Arts is anything less than the most entrepreneurial and innovative public university arts college in the country. We are resolutely populist in our inclusiveness and rigorously venerable in our traditions, but we are also impatiently progressive, entrepreneurial and unorthodox. And if we are all that, it’s in no small part because of the ambition and steadfast commitment of our Fine Arts Advisory Council, our friends and alumni.
I am hugely optimistic about the college’s future, as well as the future of the arts in public education in this country—and all the more so for Dr. Rivera-Servera being appointed the next dean of the College of Fine Arts.
I hope you’ll join me in giving a warm welcome to Dean Rivera-Servera. I look forward to working with him as he transitions into this new role.
