Jane Desmond
About
Jane Desmond is a Professor in Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies, and Co-founder and current Director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies, a center in International Programs. Her primary areas of interest focus of issues of embodiment, display, and social identity, as well as the transnational dimensions of U.S. Studies. Her areas of expertise include performance studies, critical theory, visual culture( including museum studies and tourism studies), the critical analysis of the U.S. in global perspectives, and, most recently, the political economy of human/animal relations. She has previously worked as a modern dancer and choreographer, and in film, video, and the academy.
Education
- 1993: Ph.D., Yale University, American Studies
- 1991, M.Phil., Yale University, American Studies
- 1975: M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College
- 1973: B.A., Brown University, Music and Dance
Academic Employment
- 2007- present: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies; Director, International Forum for U.S. Studies
- 2004-2006: University of Iowa, Associate Dean of International Programs
- 2003-2006: University of Iowa, Associate Professor of International Studies
- 1999-2006: University of Iowa, Associate Professor of American Studies
Selected Publications
BOOKS
- Editor, Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexuality on and off the Stage. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Society of Dance History Scholars Series, 2001.
- Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Nov. 1999.
- Editor, Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Post-Contemporary Interventions Series, Fredric Jameson and Stanley Fish, series editors.
ARTICLES
- Editor, Special Issue on "Legacies of 1898: Revisiting U.S. Colonialisms." Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, June, 2007.
- "Towards a Prismatic 'American Studies'" In Safundi: Journal of South African and American Studies, Jan. 2007.
- “Transnational American Studies: Limits to Collaboration” in American Studies International, 2003.
- “Mapping American Studies Across National Boundaries,” in the Hungarian Journal of American Studies, summer, 2002.
- "Picturing Hawai'i: The 'Ideal' Native and the Origins of Tourism (1880-1915)." In Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 7, No. 2 (fall), 1999.
- "Towards a Political Economy of American Studies: Reports from an Experiment in Process," in Through the Looking Glass: American Studies in Transcultural Perspective, European Contributions to American Studies, Vol. 40, Amsterdam, 1999. Co-authored with Virginia Dominguez.
Works In Progress
Displaying Death/Animating Life: Embodyng Trans-species Relations between Animals and Humans. (book manuscript)
Courses Taught
- Senior Seminar in Gender and Women's Studies
- Museums and the Politics of Representation
- Dance in America
- Performing America Queerly
- The Arts in American Culture
- Gender on Stage and Off
- The Culture of Nature
- The Craft of Research
Graduate Courses
- Performance Studies
- Theory and Practice in American Studies
- The Arts, Identity and Cultural Politics
- Crossing Borders: Foreign Scholarship on the U.S.