DANC 365 - Dance and Identity on the Global Stage

This course asks what it means to dance “locally” in a global world. It considers how contemporary global dance practices in historical context challenge neat distinctions between Western and non-Western traditions and serve as active sites that construct and/or critique these classifications. To explore dance as a complex site of cultural negotiation, contestation, and exchange, the course traces transnational dance diasporas across the global north/south axis and across the Atlantic Ocean. Students examine how global dance flows animate the formation of national, racial, ethnic, and gendered (post)colonial identities, chart global migration patterns, mobilize transnational political economies, and complicate facile understandings of cultural authenticity.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): CRES 365
Notes: This course may be applied toward the dance studies requirements and as a junior seminar.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).