Topics in Prose Fiction: Dance and Literature: On Writing Movement

What happens when writers confront dance? Around 1900, dance became a topic of enormous fascination in works of Euro-American Modernists such as Mallarmé, Rilke, Woolf, Beckett. This seminar will explore this and earlier encounters, juxtaposing them with texts written by dancers such as Loïe Fuller, Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham. Topics include gesture; expression; human vs. technological movement; connections/tensions between dance and language, choreography and writing, performance and text; the (de)construction of gendered and racialized otherness. Readings will be supplemented with time-based media and live performances.