Joanna Dee Das

Joanna Dee Das is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests include dance in the African diaspora, musical theater dance, and the politics of performance in the twentieth century. She is the author of Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford 2017), which won the 2018 de la Torre Bueno Best First Book Award from the Dance Studies Association and a 2019 honorable mention Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theatre and performance from the American Society for Theatre Research. She has published other articles and essays in the Journal of Urban History, Dance Research Journal, and the anthology The Futures of Dance Studies (Wisconsin 2019). She has won several fellowships and awards for her research, including an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship.

In addition to her scholarship, Joanna is a Certified Instructor of Dunham Technique and is passionate about teaching the history, theory, and practice of dance from a globally-informed perspective. Before and during graduate school, she worked as a professional dancer and choreographer in New York, where she performed at Dance Theater Workshop (NYLA), the Cunningham Studio, WAXWorks, and DanceNow/NYC. She is also committed to public engagement. Since 2015, she has annually co-organized the public symposium on Katherine Dunham as a part of the Institute for Dunham Technique Certification.