Dance, whether considered as an art form or embodied social practice, as product or process, is a prime subject for culturalal analysis. Yet only recently have studies of dance become concerned with the ideological, theoretical, and social meanings of dance practices, performances, and institutions. In Meaning in Motion, Jane C. Desmond brings together the work of critics who have ventured into the boundaries between dance and cultural studies, and thus maps a little-known and rarely explored critical site. Writing from a broad range of perspectives, contributors from disciplines as varied as art history and anthropology, dance history and political science, philosophy and women's studies chart the questions and challenges that mark this site. How does dance enact or rework social categories of identity? How do meanings change as dance styles cross borders of race, nationality, or class?. How do we talk about materiality and motion, sensation and expressivity, kinesthetics and ideology? The authors engage these issues in a variety of contexts: from popular social dances to experimentation of the avant-garde; from nineteenth-century ballet and contemporary Afro-Brazilian Carnival dance to hip hop, the dance hall, and film; from the nationalist politics of folk dances to the feminist philosophies of modern dance. Giving definition to a new field of study, Meaning in Motion broadens the scope of dance analysis and extends to cultural studies new ways of approaching matters of embodiment, identity, and representation.

Jane Desmond is a Professor in Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies, and Co-founder and current Director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies, a center in International Programs. Her primary areas of interest focus of issues of embodiment, display, and social identity, as well as the transnational dimensions of U.S. Studies. Her areas of expertise include performance studies, critical theory, visual culture (including museum studies and tourism studies), the critical analysis of the U.S. in global perspectives, and, most recently, the political economy of human/animal relations. She has previously worked as a modern dancer and choreographer, and in film, video, and the academy.

Education

1993: Ph.D., Yale University, American Studies

1991, M.Phil., Yale University, American Studies

1973: B.A., Brown University, Music and Dance

1975: M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College