Studies in Dance book series aims to further the goals of DSA by making widely available the rich and diverse scholarship that takes dance as its subject.
Ranging from new methods of historical inquiry to multiple theoretical perspectives, books in the series answer a growing demand for works that provide fresh analytical perspectives on dancing, dancers, and dances in a global context. Each volume in the series is accessible to specialist and layperson alike, providing a valuable resource for scholars and an informative education for the general reader.
Founded in 1988 as a scholarly journal, Studies in Dance History was redefined as a book series in 1994. It is now published by the University of Michigan Press.
Authors wishing to submit proposals or manuscripts to be considered for publication in the Studies in Dance should consult these guidelines. Contact: [email protected]
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES HERE
READ ABOUT THE FIRST-TIME AUTHOR MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
Performing the Greek Crisis explores the impact of the Greek financial crisis (2009–19) on the performing arts sector in Greece, and especially on contemporary concert dance. When Greece became the first European Union member to be threatened with default, the resulting budget cuts pushed dance to develop in unprecedented directions. The book examines the repercussions that the crisis had on artists’ daily lives and experiences, weaving the personal with the political to humanize a phenomenon that, to date, had been examined chiefly through economic and statistical lenses. Informed by the author’s experience of growing up in Greece and including interviews and rich descriptions of performances, the book offers a glimpse into a pivotal moment in Greek history. (shipped to DSA members as of December 31, 2023)
Kinethic California: Dancing Funk and Disco Era Kinships documents the emergence of new forms of black social and vernacular dance invented by youth living in 1970s California, who helped build the foundations of contemporary hip hop/streetdance culture. Naomi Macalalad Bragin weaves interviews and ethnographies of first-generation (1960s-70s) dancers of strutting, boogaloo, robotting, popping, locking, waacking, and punking styles, as it advances a theory of dance as kinetic kinship formation through a focus on techniques and practices of the dancers themselves. She offers that the term given to these collective movement practices is kinethic to bring attention to motion at the core of black aesthetics that generate dances as forms of kinship beyond blood relation. Kinethics reorient dancers toward kinetic kinship in ways that give continuity to black dance lineages under persistent conditions of disappearance and loss. As dancers engage kinethics, they reinvent gestural vocabularies that describe worlds they imagine into knowing-being. (shipped to DSA members as of December 31, 2022)
SanSan Kwan, Series Editor
Aimee Meredith Cox, Associate Editor, First-Time Authors Program
