Join CLAS for our Fall 2026 Lunch & Learn Series. Our final presenter this semester is Dr. Katherine Borland (Department of Comparative Studies).
Free and open to all, registration required.
Abstract
A Postmodern Dance Practice born in the tumult of 1970s-era U.S. counterculture, Contact Improvisation has spread globally over its 50+ year existence. Yet tensions exist between dancers of the global south and north around the ways that CI across borders participates in tourism circuits. This talk will explore those tensions and opportunities by drawing on the writings and manifestos of current Latin American practitioners and by sharing ethnographic data from my own participation in two recent CI Encuentros in Costa Rica and Peru.
Bio
Katherine Borland is Professor Emerita in the Department of Comparative Studies.
She studies and teaches about the artfulness of ordinary life, and the ways in which traditional expressive arenas constitute contested terrain. In 2013, she published International Volunteer Tourism: Critical Reflections on Good Works in Central America (co-edited with Abigail E. Adams, Palgrave). Subsequently, she has published a number of essays on a range of subjects in narrative research, service-learning models, diverse environmentalism, conceptualizations of race in folklore and in the folklore classroom, and improvisation.
In her teaching she works to develop and hone student’s interpretive, synthesizing and analytic skills through shared inquiry, team research and writing. She is a passionate advocate of both experiential and discussion-based pedagogies.
