
with Dr. Joanna Dee Das
Co-Sponsored by the Performance Studies Working Group
All are welcome to these free discussions, but please register to attend>
Joanna Dee Das is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include dance in the African diaspora, musical theater dance, and the politics of performance in the twentieth century. She is the author of Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford 2017), which won the 2018 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award from the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and a 2019 honorable mention Errol Hill Award for “Outstanding Scholarship in African American Theatre and Performance” from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR). She has also published articles in the Journal of Urban History, Dance Research Journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, and ARTS journal. She has won several fellowships for her research, including an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in Ethnic and Cultural Studies. In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Das is a Certified Instructor of Dunham Technique and a choreographer. In December 2020, she co-created a dance film with filmmaker Denise Ward-Brown called Seeking Josephine Baker: Dancing on the Land.