Brenda Dixon-Gottschild (Temple University)

“Challenges, Chances, Changes — My Object Lesson in Reclaiming my Time”

This a biographical reflection is based on a decades-long career as performer, professor, scholar, writer. Diversity, inclusion, and the peculiar career trajectory of an elder African-American woman are implicit in this her story that unfolds as a powerpoint-performance-lecture-conversation. My perspective is personal—thus, the “my object lesson” in the title.

Integral to this event is audience participation at the close of my staged presentation. Rather than the usual “talk-back” format, I will facilitate a post-presentation “reflexive reflection,” utilizing an original approach that I developed over many years and several iterations.

Brenda Dixon-Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance. 

This event is open to the public and part of AIR.

Arts Interdisciplinary Research (AIR) is a holistic research center and forum for creative and scholarly research across the arts that includes cutting-edge colloquia, exploratory seminars, lecture demonstrations, launches of research publications and creative works, reading groups, faculty talks, and stand-alone conferences initiated by the faculty of the Center for the Performing and Cinematic Arts.