Dance 272 - DANCE AND CULTURE

What social functions do dance serve? How does the body signify culture? How does movement articulate identities? What are connections between dancing and other social practices? How do theories of performance and embodiment help understand the relationships between self, body, culture, and society? This course aims to answer these questions from the perspective of dance anthropology. It analyzes documentaries and texts that illustrate the diverse manners in which ethnographers approach the study of dance as a sociocultural process. It also discusses the nature of fieldwork and ethnographic research in dance, critically examining how contemporary ethnographers negotiate the historical relationship between anthropology and coloniality. The course highlights ethnographies of dance forms from the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.