Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:56:02.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inside/Beside Dance Studies: A Conversation: Mellon Dance Studies in/and the Humanities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2014

Michelle Clayton ,
Mark Franko ,
Nadine George-Graves ,
André Lepecki ,
Susan Manning ,
Janice Ross  and
Rebecca Schneider
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 2012, Susan Manning, Rebecca Schneider, and Janice Ross collaborated across their home institutions of Northwestern University, Brown University, and Stanford University, respectively, to found a research initiative interrogating the field of dance studies. This manifold project, Dance Studies in/and the Humanities, receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through 2015 and includes a series of public roundtable discussions. This conversation—abridged from the original event—took place during two such roundtables at Brown University in June 2013, and it features substantial contributions from scholars Michelle Clayton, Mark Franko, Nadine George-Graves, André Lepecki, Susan Manning, Janice Ross, and Rebecca Schneider. Speakers address what dance studies may need, want, or do in this current historical moment. Manning articulates her experience being “inside” and “beside” dance studies through teaching in an integrationist/assimilationist model that promotes dance as a subfield in humanities (and occasionally social science) departments. Franko asserts that dance studies formed as a result of an epistemological break in the 1980s and adds that interdisciplinary frameworks can also support this relatively new field.

Through embracing the partiality that comes with interdisciplinarity, Clayton encourages participants to investigate generative misunderstandings. Ross provides a comprehensive account of the crisis in the humanities, and Lepecki connects this crisis to the permanent state of war in the U.S. and emphasizes the importance of theory in dance studies. Falling short of Afro-pessimism, George-Graves calls for dance studies to infiltrate the upper echelons of higher education administration, and Schneider articulates post-structuralism's link to the Global South while calling for more scholarly representation from this area of the world. Through exploring possibilities for embodied knowledge, reenacting post-structuralism, and embracing partiality, these scholars address the expanding aperture of dance studies in a global economy. Topics identified for future discussion include decentering the whiteness of dance studies transnationally, exploring how dance studies methodologies are currently utilized in academia, and expanding dance studies beyond the American academy.

Keywords

AcademiaAfro-pessimismagencyassimilationistchoreography as researchchoreopoliticalcrisis in humanitiesdance and higher educationdance and humanitiesdance and theaterdance and theorydance and visual artdance dramaturgydance methodologyDance Studiesembodied knowledgegenerative misunderstandingsGlobal Southgraduate dance programshigher education administrationhumanismintegrationistinterdisciplinaritypartialitypedagogyperformance studiespolitical theorypost-structuralismprivilegereenactmentslashSociety of Dance History Scholarstransnationalismundergraduate dance programswarWestern theater dancewhitenessworld dance
Type
Dialogue
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , December 2013 , pp. 5 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Edited and introduced by Noémie Solomon

Transcribed by Stefanie Miller

References

Works Cited

Arendt, Hanna. [1958] 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. [1968] 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul, Patton.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Drukman, Steven, Suzan-Lori, Parks and Liz, Diamond. 1995. “Suzan-Lori Parks and Liz Diamond: Doo-a-Diddly-Dit-Dit: An Interview.” TDR 39(3): 56–75.Google Scholar
Franko, Mark. 2010. “Dance and the Political: States of Exception.” In Dance Discourses: Keywords in Dance Research, edited by Franco, Susanne and Nordera, Marina, 11–28. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Franko, Mark. 2013. “Global Modernities.” Dance Research Journal 45(1): 1–3.Google Scholar
George-Graves, Nadine, ed. Forthcoming. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Giersdorf, Jens Richard. 2009. “Dance Studies in the International Academy: Genealogy of a Disciplinary Formation.” Dance Research Journal 41(1): 23–44.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna, quoted in Carolyn Dinshaw. 1999. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lepecki, André. 2010. “The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances.” Dance Research Journal 42(2): 28–48.Google Scholar
Lepecki, André. 2013. “From Partaking to Initiating: Leadingfollowing as Dance's (a-personal) Political Singularity.” In Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, edited by Siegmund, Gerald and Hölscher, Stefan, 21–38. Zürich: Diaphanes.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press Feminist Series.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François. [1979] 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoffrey, Bennington and Brian, Massumi.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Randy. 2013. “Toward a Social Logic of the Derivative.” In Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, edited by Siegmund, Gerald and Hölscher, Stefan, 209–25. Zürich: Diaphanes.Google Scholar
Menand, Louis. 2010. The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan. 2008. “Looking Back Moving Forward.” In Looking Back/Moving Forward: International Symposium on Dance Research, Proceedings. Society of Dance History Scholars Conference: Skidmore College.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan, and Ruprecht, Lucia. 2012. “Introduction: New Dance Studies / New German Cultural Studies.” In New German Dance Studies, edited by Manning, Susan and Ruprecht, Lucia, 1–16. Bloomington, IL: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Parks, Suzan-Lori. 1995. “The Death of the Last Man in the Whole Entire World.” In The America Plays and Other Works, 99–132. New York: Theatre Communications Group.Google Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Soussloff, Catherine M., and Franko, Mark. 2002. “Visual and Performance Studies: A New History of Interdisciplinarity.” Social Text 20(4): 29–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Harvey. 2010. Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar