Radical movements: Katherine Dunham and Ronald K. Brown teaching toward critical consciousness.
Item
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Title
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Radical movements: Katherine Dunham and Ronald K. Brown teaching toward critical consciousness.
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Identifier
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AAI3159274
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identifier
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3159274
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Creator
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Roberts, Rosemarie A.
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Contributor
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Includes supplementary digital materials | Adviser: Michelle Fine
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Date
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2005
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social | Education, Teacher Training | Dance | Black Studies
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Abstract
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While the power of the arts to move, provoke, and educate has been recognized (Greene, 1995), we know little from performers/educators about their theories for social justice, multi-cultural educating. In this dissertation study, a conversation is created between social psychology, education, and the arts. Examined is how educators provoke critical consciousness in diverse audiences within the terrain of African-derived Black performance dance. Dance is conceptualized as a critical site of action wherein knowledge and power are enacted and contested towards three objectives: (A) educating critically, broadly, and deeply within and outside traditionally-defined educative sites; (B) teaching towards a critical understanding of identity and history; (C) constructing multiple historical narratives and representations of marginalized individuals and groups. Inspired by these objectives and using African-derived Black dance as the site of study, this inquiry builds upon the Freirian tradition and argues that the world is not only in the text. It is also in the body. Case studies of prominent African-American, dancers/choreographers/educators Katherine Dunham and Ronald K. Brown are undertaken in order to address three areas: (1) Method of educating to provoke critical consciousness across diverse viewing audiences; (2) Content of critical consciousness; (3) Theories of audience provocation. A multi-method approach, including interviews, observations and archival data collection, are used in order to build the case studies. The dissertation project examines the performance of resistance to domination; in particular, I examine critical pedagogies of the body and teaching practices of Katherine Dunham and Ronald K. Brown, focusing on how they, through performance dance, teach critical consciousness to diverse viewing audiences. Findings include a four-minute digital film (The Collective Body and Collective Remembering.mov) based on Walking Out the Dark, a dance choreographed by Ronald K. Brown and performed by Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, which was analyzed and edited for social meaning. The film presents dissertation findings in text and movement. In particular, the film details the social conditions necessary for creating a collective body, brought together by means of the performance, to remember dislocated/dismembered elements of American history, black culture and aesthetics.*.;*This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation).
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
