Profile

Dr Amy. Swanson’s research focuses on contemporary dance and performance in Senegal and her teaching spans dance studies, dance practice, and African studies. Her writing has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, and Critical African Studies. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. Her forthcoming book, Dancing Opacity: Contemporary Dance, Transnationalism, and Queer Possibility in Senegal (University of Michigan Press), examines queer aesthetics in contemporary dance in Senegal in relation to artists' embeddedness in both local and transnational artistic circuits. This past fall, she joined the Board of Directors of the Dance Studies Association as Vice President of Conferences.

Swanson previously held a position as Assistant Professor of Dance at Colgate University and she also taught at Northwestern University, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D.