Research Catalog

Title

Katherine Dunham : recovering an anthropological legacy, choreographing ethnographic futures / edited by Elizabeth Chin.

Publication

Santa Fe : School for Advanced Research Press, [2014]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Chin, Elizabeth, 1963-

Description

xxii, 164 pages : illustrations; 23 cm.

Summary

Katherine Dunham was an anthropologist. One of the first African Americans to obtain a degree in anthropology, she conducted groundbreaking fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti in the early 1930s and wrote several books including Journey to Accompong, Island Possessed, and Las Danzas de Haiti. Decades before Margaret Mead was publishing for popular audiences in Redbook, Dunham wrote ethnographically informed essays for Esquire and Mademoiselle under the pseudonym Kaye Dunn. Katherine Dunham was a dancer. The first person to head a black modern dance company, Dunham toured the world, appeared in numerous films in the United States and abroad, and worked globally to promote the vitality and relevance of African diasporic dance and culture. Dunham was a cultural advisor, teacher, Kennedy Center honoree, and political activist. This book explores Katherine Dunham's contribution to anthropology and the ongoing relevance of her ideas and methodologies, rejecting the idea that art and academics need to be cleanly separated from each other. Drawing from Dunham's holistic vision, the contributors began to experiment with how to bring the practice of art back into the discipline of anthropology--and vice versa.--Publisher description.

Series Statement

School of American Research advanced seminar series

Uniform Title

• Project Muse UPCC books.
• School of American Research advanced seminar series.

Subject

• Dunham, Katherine
• Dunham, Katherine 1909-2006
• Women dancers > United States > Biography
• African American dancers > Biography
• Women anthropologists > United States > Biography
• African American anthropologists > Biography
• African American anthropologists
• African American dancers
• Women anthropologists
• Women dancers
• Anthropologie
• Tanz
• United States

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-154) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Biographies / Katherine Dunham, Ronald Marshall, and Anindo Marshall -- Research-to-performance methodology : embodying knowledge and power from the field to the concert stage / Rosemarie A. Roberts -- Katherine Dunham's first journey in anthropology / A. Lynn Bolles -- Katherine Dunham and the folklore performance movement in post-US occupation Haiti / Kate Ramsey -- Notes on Floyd's guitar blues : Katherine Dunham's costumes and musical production / Ronald Marshall -- Dunham technique : anthropological politics of dancing through ethnography / Elizabeth Chin -- Katherine Dunham made me ... / Dána-Ain Davis -- In the Dunham way : sewing (sowing) the seams of dance, anthropology, and youth arts activism / Aimee Meredith Cox.

ISBN

• 9781938645129
• 193864512X

LCCN

• ^^2013021504
• 40023905276

OCLC

• 846846949
• SCSB-11988046

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library