American Social Dance and Visual Culture

Catalog description

Description: This introductory course offers a beginning-level survey of the cultural history of social dance in North America from the eighteenth century to the present. It combines study of the history, theory, and visual/material culture of social dance with physical practice of specific dance forms. Because few comprehensive written sources exist for social dance, visual art, including film, animation, paintings, sculpture, photography, and illustration, is a vital tool for understanding historic dance and its role in American society. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the visual culture of social dance in order to gain insight into its historical functions as a tool for social cohesion, intercultural exchange, protest/activism, and identity formation, among other things. Through the practice of these dance forms, we will add an experiential component to our analysis of the roles that social dance has played in American culture over time. Same course as ART 2563 .