Dancing the Americas

Introduces the role dance has played and continues to play in the formation of the Americas. Students engage with a diverse range of perspectives on dance practices and analyses of ways dance has contributed to the constitution of identities and as resistance against colonial domination throughout histories of the Americas. Broadening notions of what dance is and what those who participate in dancing experience in different social, cultural and political contexts, this class is inspired by dancing bodies as bearers of socio-cultural knowledge. Class provides tools for deeper appreciation of dance as a primary human activity, as generative of socio-political identities, as negotiation with and resistance against bio-political institutions, and as a category of methods for imagining desirable futures. (Formerly Dancing in the Americas.)