Brooks Emanuel

Brooks Emanuel has backgrounds in both (1) dance and choreography and (2) civil rights law, policy advocacy, and legislative and political work. He obtained his J.D. from NYU Law and his MFA in Dance from Duke University and has both performed at Symphony Space in New York City and drafted petitions to the United States Supreme Court. Among other roles, Brooks has had the great fortune to work for both Stacey Abrams (Georgia House Democratic Caucus) and Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), as well as serving as public policy director for Planned Parenthood Southeast. A large portion of his work in these realms focused particularly on challenging the injustices of the criminal legal system and protecting voting rights. In the dance world, he has performed with Michael Mao Dance, PearsonWidrig Dance, Beacon Dance, and Several Dancers Core, among others. In his current work, he seeks to bring all of these experiences to bear.

At the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Brooks creates and implements both curricular and cocurricular programming for undergraduates around radical imagination, expansive thinking, and strategies—including embodied and artistic—for changing the world. In addition to his work at Kenan, Brooks facilitates embodied movement workshops for social justice practitioners and creates performance works that investigate humans’ relationships to each other and the rest of the natural world.