Dance 3412: History/Theory/Literature 2 – Concert Dance in the 20th-21st Centuries

Survey of dance from the early twentieth century to the present. This course highlights choreographers and choreographic developments in concert dance to examine the ways that dances encompass cultural and historical ideas. Class discussions will bring to light the artistic developments and aesthetic trends in the dances in relation to the social politics of the time period, and issues of gender, race, class, nation, and identity in the choreography. Written assignments will ask students to write cohesively and academically about choreographic works in terms of historical, theoretical, and movement description foundations. (Undergraduate)

Book List (Spring 2021):
Banes, Sally. Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage.
DeFrantz, Thomas, ed. Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance.
Dils, Ann and Ann Cooper Albright, eds. Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader.
Dixon Gottschild, Brenda. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts.
George-Graves, Nadine. Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out
Additional readings available on the course Carmen site.

Dance 6301: Laban Systems: Movements, Methods, and Analytical Frameworks

This hybrid studio-theory course takes a decolonial approach to the Laban systems in order to repurpose their usable parts as research modalities for dance studies and choreographic practices. It radically interrogates Laban Movement Analysis, Motif writing/description, and Labanotation through studio-based studies and scholarly applications, as a way to train students to see kinesthetically and to activate embodied modes of analysis based on a codified vocabulary. The course further questions how Laban taxonomies interface with digital technologies for interdisciplinary analysis of movement. The course trains students to re-approach their own movement patterns to deepen and expand their choreographic processes, and trains students in kinesthetic seeing to generate rich movement description that feeds scholarly analysis. This course is open to all MFA and PhD students. Final project options range from completely performed/choreographic to completely written. Prerequisite: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor.

Book List (Autumn 2020):
Guest, Ann Hutchinson. Labanotation: The System of Analyzing and Recording Movement (2005 edition).
Guest, Ann Hutchinson and Tina Curran. Your Move (2008 edition).
Foster, Susan Leigh. Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance.
Miller, Bebe. Dance Fort: A History. https://digitalbookstore.osu.edu/book/dance-fort-history
Additional readings available on the course Carmen site.

Dance 7403: Global Dance Modernisms: Transnationalism in Motion

Research paper course

This course highlights choreographers and choreographic developments in concert dance from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1960s to examine the ways that dances encompass cultural and historical ideas as they circulate. It engages the idea of “modernism” both as a chronological set of developments and as an aesthetic ideology in the early and mid twentieth century. Class discussions will bring to light the artistic developments and aesthetic trends in the dances in relation to the social politics of the time period, and issues of gender, race, class, and nation in the choreography. Written assignments will ask students to write cohesively and academically about choreographic works in terms of historical, theoretical, aesthetic, and movement description foundations. This course is targeted for MFA students and is open to all MA, MFA, and PhD students. This course fulfills the research paper requirement for the Department of Dance. The course caters to the needs of all graduate students writing their research papers and preparing for their comprehensive exams, and students who anticipate teaching in higher education or who would like to know more about the history of contemporary dance. (Graduate)

Book List (Autumn 2019):
Desmond, Jane, ed. Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage.
Croft, Clare. Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange.
Croft, Clare, ed. Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings.
Dixon Gottschild, Brenda. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts.
Elswit, Kate. Watching Weimar Dance.
Graff, Ellen. Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942.
Kowal, Rebekah. How To Do Things with Dance: Performing Change in Postwar America.
Manning, Susan. Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion.
Morris, Gay. A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945-1960.
Preston, Carrie. Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance.
Purkayastha, Prarthana. Indian Modern Dance, Feminism, and Nationalism.
Shea Murphy, Jacqueline. The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories.
Wilcox, Emily. Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy.
Additional readings available on the course Carmen site.

Dance 7404: Postmodernism

Research Paper Course

Focusing on how postmodernism functions from 1960–2000, this course highlights choreographers and dance practices in the United States in Europeanist, Africanist, Latinx, Jewish, and queer cultural and aesthetic contexts, and includes the influence of choreographers and dance practices from European, South Asian, and East Asian locales in the United States. Class discussions will bring to light the artistic developments and aesthetic trends in the dances in relation to the social politics of the time period, and issues of gender, race, class, and geopolitics in the choreography. Written assignments will ask students to write cohesively and academically about choreographic works in terms of historical, theoretical, aesthetic, and movement description foundations. This course is targeted for MFA students and is open to all MFA and PhD students. It caters to the needs of all graduate students preparing for their comprehensive exams, and to students who anticipate teaching in higher education or who would like to know more about the history of contemporary dance. This course fulfills the research paper requirement. Prerequisite: Graduate standing or permission of the instructor.

Book List (Autumn 2018):

Albright, Ann Cooper. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance
Banes, Sally, ed. Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible
Banes, Sally. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance
– – -. Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism
Burt, Ramsay. Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces
Candelario, Rosemary. Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko & Koma’s Asian/American Choreographies
Chatterjea, Ananya. Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies Through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha
Desmond, Jane, ed. Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage
Dixon Gottschild, Brenda. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance
Foster, Susan Leigh. Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance
George-Graves, Nadine. Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out
Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism (2002 edition)
Malnig, Julie, ed. Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader
Novack, Cynthia J. Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture
Rivera-Servera, Ramón. Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics
Rossen, Rebecca. Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance
Additional readings available on the Carmen course site.

Dance 7409: Ethnographies of Dance and Performance

Reading and conducting ethnographic research in areas of dance and performance, including feminist and postcolonial approaches to Western, non-Western, and globalized forms. This course focuses on predominantly non-Western and non-stage-based dance practices to engage how dance produces culture in a variety of global contexts. Written assignments include ethnographic fieldwork notes, a book review, and an assignment of the student’s choice. This course is open to all MA, MFA, and PhD students.

N.B.: Graduate students in Dance who wish to teach Dance 3402: Dance in Global Contexts are strongly encouraged to take Dance 7409. Students who take Dance 7409 will be given preference for teaching Dance 3402 over students who did not take this course.

Book List (Spring 2020):

Browning, Barbara. Samba: Resistance in Motion
Chang, Shih-Ming Li and Lynn E. Fredericksen. Chinese Dance: In the Vast Land and Beyond
Daniel, Yvonne. Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé.
Emerson, Robert M., Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, 2nd ed. (2011)
García, Cindy. Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles
Hahn, Tomie. Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance
Imada, Adria L. Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire
Larasati, Diyah. The Dance that Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Postgenocide Indonesia
Madison, D. Soyini. Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance, 3rd ed. (2020)
McCarren, Felicia. 2013. French Moves: The Cultural Politics of Le Hip Hop
McMains, Juliet. Spinning Mambo into Salsa: Caribbean Dance in Global Commerce
Savigliano, Marta. Tango and the Political Economy of Passion
Schloss, Joseph G. Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York
Srinivasan, Priya. Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor

Dance 7490: Special Topics Jewish and Israeli Dance Histories: Dancing Diaspora, Social Justice, and Community

With a focus on dancing for social justice, this course takes a multi-ethnic approach to understanding what it means to dance the Jewish diaspora. It introduces students to dance practices in Israel/Palestine and the Jewish diaspora between the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries. The course covers contemporary Jewish and Israeli choreographers and practitioners through topics of Jewish and Israeli culture, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, assimilation, the body, race, and dance for social change, in folk and concert dance practices. Discussions, written assignments, and class experiences will engage histories of the Jewish diaspora and Israel/Palestine in relation to choreographic trends. During some classes, we will welcome special guests who will talk about what it has been like to be a working artist during COVID. Open to graduate students in all disciplines and degree programs; fulfills PhD HTL Choreography core course requirement in the Department of Dance. Undergraduate students welcome by permission of instructor. This course will be delivered synchronously and online.

Book List (Spring 2021):

Albright, Ann Cooper. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance
Boyarin, Daniel, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini, eds. Queer Theory and the Jewish Question.
Graff, Ellen. Stepping Left: Dance and Politics in New York City, 1928-1942
Fortuna, Victoria. Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires
Ingber, Judith Brin, ed. Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance
Jackson, Naomi. Converging Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y
Karina, Lilian, and Marion Kant. Hitler’s Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich.
Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism
Manning, Susan and Lucia Ruprecht, eds. New German Dance Studies
Roginsky, Dina and Henia Rottenberg, eds. Moving through Conflict: Dance and Politics in Israel
Rossen, Rebecca. Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance
Schwadron, Hannah. The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender, and Jewish Joke-Work in U.S. Pop Culture
Spiegel, Nina. Embodying Hebrew Culture: Aesthetics, Athletics, and Dance in the Jewish Community of Mandate Palestine
Additional readings available on the course Carmen site.

Dance 7900: Theories and Methods for Dance Studies

Theories and methods of research in dance studies; PhD core course. This course engages students in a survey of research methodologies including historical method, archival research, ethnography, practice-as-research, choreographic analysis, and critical theory. Writing assignments guide students through detailed practical application of the research methods, as well as tools for proposing and revising a paper for conference presentation and preparing a bibliography toward an area of research interest. (Graduate)

Book List (Spring 2018):
Albright, Ann Cooper. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance.
Bales, Melanie and Karen Eliot. Dance on Its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies.
Belcher, Wendy. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success.
Buckland, Theresa Jill, ed. Dancing from Past to Present: Nation, Culture, Identities.
Carter, Alexandra and Janet O’Shea. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader. 2nd ed.
Desmond, Jane, ed. Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On and Off the Stage.
Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. 2nd ed.
Franco, Susanne and Marina Nordera, ed. Dance Discourses: Keywords in Dance Research.
George-Graves, Nadine. Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working it Out.
Howell, Martha C. and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods.
Lepecki, André, ed. Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory.
Martin, Randy. Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics.
Noland, Carrie and Sally Ann Ness. Migrations of Gesture.
Nelson, Robin. Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances.
Ritchie, Donald A. Doing Oral History. 3rd Edition.
Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas.
Style Guide: Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.
Additional readings available on the course Carmen site.

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