Congratulations to PhD Students Yujie Chen, Amy Schofield and recent Alumna Bhumi Patel (PhD 2025) for winning this year's Selma Jeanne Cohen Award presented by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) at their upcoming conference June 25-29, 2025. Director of the PhD program, Harmony Bench, notes: “Each of the award winners is doing incredibly important work that exemplifies excellence in Dance Studies scholarship; it’s wonderful to have their contributions recognized in this way.” Notably, Yujie, Bhumi, and Amy also share the same doctoral advisor here at Ohio State: Hannah Kosstrin. Bench continues, “It is no surprise that these three award-winners are Dr. Kosstrin’s advisees. She sees the best in her students and pushes them to be their best."

According to DSA, "In recognition of Selma Jeanne Cohen's great contributions to dance history, the Society of Dance History Scholars inaugurated an award in her name at its 1995 conference. Now awarded by DSA, the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award aims to encourage graduate student members of DSA by recognizing excellence in dance scholarship." In recognition of "the originality of the research, the rigor of the argument, and the clarity of the writing," the awardees will each present the following papers at the conference:

• Yujie Chen, “Bodies In Flux: Rock Youth and Chinese Hip-Hop Dance in Early Reform Era China,”
• Bhumi Patel, “Disidentifications of Survival and the Borderland Body in Miguel Gutierrez’s This Bridge Called My Ass”
• Amy Schofield, “‘We’re the Survival of Every Moment’: Vincent Griego’s Indita Flamenca”

Chen's research examines Chinese contemporary dance and popular performances in translational contexts. Her publications appeared in Dance Chronicle, Journal of Beijing Dance Academy, and more. She is a practitioner and educator of Chinese classical dance, Chinese ethnic and folk dance, and Taiji martial arts. She is also a dance filmmaker and multimedia artist. She was the commissioned Artist with the Young Artist Platform (YAP) of the China Dancers Association. 

Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, and science fiction choreographer. In its purest form, she creates performance works as a love letter to her ancestors. While Patel has trained in Western forms, she seeks to create movement at the intersection of embodied research and generating new futures, using improvisational practice for voice and body as a pursuit for liberation. Patel tends to her desires to create liberatory, nourishing community spaces through dancing, choreographing, curating, teaching, and scholarship.

Schofield is a US-American flamenco dancer, scholar, educator, and choreographer whose research explores the development and evolution of flamenco dance in the diaspora. After beginning her flamenco education in Philadelphia with Anna and Tito Rubio, she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of New Mexico. She has studied flamenco baile and cante at the Fundación de Arte Flamenco de Cristina Heeren in Seville and the Centro de Arte Flamenco y Danza Española Amor de Dios in Madrid, as well as in numerous workshops in Spain and the US.

Photo: Yujie Chen, Bhumi Patel and Amy Schofield