Albright, Ann Cooper

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Albright, Ann Cooper

PERSONAL:

Education: Bryn Mawr College, B.A., 1981; Temple University, M.F.A., 1983; New York University, Ph.D., 1991.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Gender & Women's Studies Program, Oberlin College, 10 N. Professor St., Rice Hall 116, Oberlin, OH 44074. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic and writer. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, associate professor of dance, 1990—. Langston Middle School, Oberlin, director of Girls in Motion program.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 2005-06, for Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loie Fuller; Individual Artist awards, Ohio Arts Council, for dance criticism.

WRITINGS:

Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 1997.

(Editor, with Ann Dils) Moving History, Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2001.

(Editor, with David Gere) Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2003.

Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loie Fuller, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2007.

Contributor to Dance Research Journal. Chair of the editorial board for the Society of Dance History Scholars.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ann Cooper Albright is a university professor who has taught courses in dance, cultural theory, women's studies, contact improvisation, and dance history. Albright has coedited and authored several books on dance. Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance discusses feminist theory and dance, female musculature, dance and disability, and race and dance. Valerie A. Briginshaw, reviewing the book in Signs, noted that the "groundbreaking work" makes "crucial contributions to an expanding scholarship that will inspire and stimulate more research in" dance studies and theories. The only criticism Briginshaw had was a reported "lack of attention to sexuality." Cara Gargano, reviewing the book for Theatre Research International, felt that the book would make "an important contribution" to dance studies. As for the mixing of dance and theories, Gargano wrote: "By choreographing contact and exchange between two traditionally antagonistic disciplines she privileges rather than negates differences and offers new opportunities for both theory and performance."