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This course serves as an introduction to dance studies at 51��������. It is intended for students new to Bennington who have a serious interest in dance, as well as those with a desire to deeply explore movement and embodied practice as an artistic form.

This course will explore the construction and experience of gender and sexuality in the Middle East through a performative lens. Drawing on research in ethnomusicology, queer and gender studies, anthropology and Middle Eastern history, the course will examine performance (music, dance, theater, poetry and more) as a process of representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of sexuality and gender identities. This course will delve into the ways that performance, gender, and sexuality relate to ethnicity, nationalism, modernity, colonialism, and religion.

Contact improvisation is an American movement form that uses sustained physical touch to create a dance with a partner. According to founding practitioner Nancy Stark Smith, contact improvisation "resembles other familiar duet forms, such as the embrace, wrestling, surfing, martial arts, and the Jitterbug, encompassing a wide range of movement from stillness to highly athletic.”

Today it is clear that the environment matters. In activism and scholarship and public policy, the environment has become a potent (if sometimes obligatory) point of reference. Less attention, however, has focused on the emergence of the environment itself as a converging field of action for advocacy, science, and statecraft. In this seminar, we will reflect not only on what we know of the environment but also on how we came to know the environment.