Academic Legacy

This readings seminar confronts the problem of "the body" through selected readings across disciplines, comparing approaches and analyzing their implications for research, performance and social action. We know that our experiences as embodied beings, our beliefs about the body, and our perceptions about others' bodies are socially constructed and speak of membership in a culture. Given the multiplicity of discourses about embodiment, how are we to sort through what it is to be embodied? What kinds of questions are we even to pose about embodiment? This is not a graduate level course because it doesn't have an extensive reading list; however, the readings are at an advanced level (approx 40 pages per week).

In this course, you will explore your own sensibilities, ideas, and assumptions about dance, learning to articulate your knowledge, values, and visions in words. You will learn to describe movement, think about movement in the context of a particular dance work, an “artworld,” a sociocultural context, and a philosophical/aesthetic tradition. Finally, you will synthesize your understanding in written essays. Critical readings provide material to “think with.”

Students will develop a foundational understanding and deepening appreciation of dance as one representation of human activity that illuminates beliefs and values found in, amongst, through, across cultural, historical and social conditions. Students view dance and engage in verbal discourse, reflective writing, essay writing and interdisciplinary projects as informal and formal measures of understanding. Appropriate for high school or early undergrad levels.

This course explores cultural performance, especially movement performance, from an ethnographic perspective, emphasizing the problem of embodiment. This first semester of a 3 part series focuses on theoretical and methodological issues at the juncture of anthropology, performance studies, and dance ethnology, beginning with relevant antecedents and ending with contemporary problematics. Along the way, we will attempt to determine what distinguishes ethnographic theory and method from other kinds of qualitative research and analytical critique.

This second semester provides a groundwork in sensory analysis and description with emphasis on local fieldwork exercises. Students will develop tools for qualitative movement and explore ways of seeing & analyzing. This methods course prepares researchers for fieldwork through training in movement observation, analysis and writing, participant observation, contextual research, and relational awareness.

Students will utilize their knowledge of Cultural Theory and and Ethnographic Methods to complete an ethnographic project. This practicum will require students to read 3 case studies, review a journal in their chosen field, review an ethnography in that field, and complete a group ethnography project.