DANC 116. Dance and Memory

This honors seminar examines how dance and memory intersect through the practice, preservation, and remembrance of embodied performance. Theoretical discussions and applied activities will explore the following questions: How do dancers record and transmit their kinesthetic knowledge? How does the dancing body act as a repository of cultural knowledge and trouble understandings of “the archive”? How does the remembrance of dance, through live reenactment, restagings, oral traditions, and museum exhibitions, (re)shape our understandings of cultural history, embodied politics, authorship, and the metaphysics of dance itself? Discussions will center debates from dance studies as well as scholarship from theorists in performance studies, cultural studies, history, and philosophy, including: Rebecca Schneider, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Diana Taylor, Jamie A. Lee, Joseph Roach, Saidiya Hartman, and others.

Double-graded seminar. Registration for BOTH SECTIONS, A and B, is required for Honors students. Non-Honors students may elect to sign up for section A for 1 credit.
Prerequisite: One Dance Studies Course or Instructor Permission
Humanities.
2 credits.
Fall 2026. McCarty
Catalog chapter: Dance
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/dance

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