Dr. Jasmine Johnson (Brown University): "Black Women from Behind: Race, Gender and Black Social Dance"

Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. Starting July 1, she will be an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Johnson has served as a Ford Foundation Diversity Pre and Post-Doctoral Fellow, a Newhouse Center for the Humanities Fellow at Wellesley College, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Africana Studies at Barnard College. Johnson's scholarship and teaching are situated at the intersection of diaspora theory, dance and performance studies, ethnography, and black feminism. Her first book manuscript, *Rhythm Nation: West African Dance and the Politics of Diaspora *, is under contract with Oxford University Press.