September 30, 2025
2 pm - 3:30 pm
Location: Sullivant Hall 247, 1813 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210
Speaker: Cindy García, author of "Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles"

Bio: Cindy García is the Chair of the Department of Art History and an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. She is a dance and cultural studies theorist and performance ethnographer. She is the founder of decolonial feminist book series, Contours ArteCalle, published digitally through the University of Minnesota Libraries. This multi-authored, bilingual publication launches the Contours Project’s focus on transnational community-engaged research, anti-racism, and relationship-building in the Americas. She is the author of “The Small Activisms of Everyday Life” in Contours (2022) and "Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles" (2013).

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

September 30, 2025
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Barnett Theatre, Sullivant Hall, 1813 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210
Ethnographic Collaborations: Performing Contours ArteCalle in the Americas A lecture by Dr. Cindy García

Contours ArteCalle is a collaborative research project, a publication, and a mode of change-making in the Americas. Ethnographic methodologies have supported the Contours ArteCalle Project since 2019, and simultaneously, the project has continuously generated some original insights about ethnography. This talk will weave together knowledges from Dance and Performance Studies, Latinx and Latin American Studies, Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship, and Decolonial Feminist Ethnography. Stories of Contours kinship, anti-racist-arts activism, and corporealities in Cuba, Mexico, and cyberspace ground Cindy García’s improvisational praxis of ethnography.

Cindy García is the Chair of the Department of Art History and an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota. She is a dance and cultural studies theorist and performance ethnographer. She is the founder of decolonial feminist book series, Contours ArteCalle, published digitally through the University of Minnesota Libraries.  She is the author of “The Small Activisms of Everyday Life” in Contours (2022) and "Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles" (2013).

This event is made possible through generous support from the Departments of English and Dance, The Center for Folklore Studies, the Center for Ethnic Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Humanities Institute, and the Latinx Studies Program.

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

October 7, 2025
3 pm - 4:30 pm
Location: Zoom - Click here to register>
Speaker: Rachel Carrico, Author of "Dancing the Politics of Pleasure at the New Orleans Second Line"

Bio: Dr. Rachel Carrico (she/her) believes that art serves an essential function in the lives of all people, including as a tool for justice. Her recent book, "Dancing the Politics of Pleasure at the New Orleans Second Line" (University of Illinois Press, 2024), received an Honorable Mention for the Dance Studies Association's de la Torre Bueno First Book Award. "Dancing the Politics of Pleasure" features a chorus of participant voices to reveal how dancers’ choices allow them to access the pleasure of reclaiming self and city through motion and rhythm while expanding a sense of the possible in the present and for the future. A serial collaborator, some of Carrico’s favorite collective projects include: co-founding Goat in the Road Productions (New Orleans); advising and co-directing film projects (Buckjumping [Lily Keber]; If Cities Could Dance [KQED]; Light Rock and Bounce [Neighborhood Story Project]); and parading each year with the Ice Divas Social & Pleasure Club. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California–Riverside and an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU, and is an assistant professor of dance studies at the University of Florida.

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

October 22, 2025
3:15 pm-4:30 pm
Location: Zoom - Click here to register>
Speaker: Ben Spatz, author of "Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research" 

Bio: Ben Spatz (they/he) is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner working at the intersections of artistic research and critical theories of embodiment and identity. They are the author of several books, including "What a Body Can Do" (2015) and "Race and the Forms of Knowledge" (2024), as well as founding editor of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research. Ben has been affiliated with the Universities of Huddersfield, Leeds, Oxford, and CUNY, and is now an Assistant Professor in Creative Practice at University of Birmingham. Their ongoing Judaica project explores diasporic and decolonial jewishness through performance, writing, and video. For more information, please visit www.urbanresearchtheater.com.

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

November 10, 2025
8:30 am - 10 am
Location: Zoom - Click here to register>
Speaker: Royona Mitra, Author of "Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch"

Bio: Royona Mitra is Professor of Dance and Performance Cultures and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion at Brunel University of London, UK. She is the author of "Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch" (2025, OUP) and "Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism" (2015, Palgrave). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA); her article "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", was awarded DSA’s Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for the Best English Language Journal Article; and her co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal, alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022. Her research examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as resistance. She contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies. Royona was Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded #DanceResearchMatters “South Asian Dance Equity” project (2023-2025) alongside Drs Prarthana Purkayastha (PI, RHUL) and Anusha Kedhar (Co-I, UC Riverside) and co-Chair of the Theatre and Performance Research Association alongside Dr Broderick Chow (RCSSD) (2022-2025).

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL