Contributors

Eleni Bizas received a BA in anthropology from Hunter College (2004), City University of New York (CUNY), and a Masters of Research (2005) and a PhD in social anthropology (2010) from the University of St. Andrews. Her doctoral research focused on the network of students and teachers who travel between New York and Dakar around the practice of Senegalese dance rhythms known as Sabar. Her thesis discussed the sociocultural aspect of this movement and explored the pedagogical techniques used in each learning setting as a lens through which to research local paradigms of knowledge, aesthetics, and different notions of 'dance.' This research was funded by a scholarship from the University of St. Andrews and grants from the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. Dr. Bizas's doctoral dissertation is in press with Berghahn Books. Dr. Bizas is currently an honorary postdoctoral fellow of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies at the University of St. Andrews and a research fellow at the Programme for the Study of Global Migration at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.

Brenda Farnell is a professor of sociocultural and linguistic anthropology and American Indian studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include multimedia ethnography, ethnopoetics and performance, Plains Indian sign language (Nakota and Kiowa) in the context of language revitalization, dances of the Northern Plains, discourse, movement literacy, and problems in social theory and embodiment. She is the author of Do You See What I Mean? Plains Indian Sign Talk and the Embodiment of Action (Texas 1995, paperback edition Nebraska 2009) and the award winning CD ROM Wiyuta: Assiniboine Storytelling with Signs. A new book, Dynamic Embodiment for Social Theory: 'I Move therefore I am' is in press (Routledge 2012). Recent papers include "The Second Somatic Revolution" (2008, with Charles Varela), "Theorizing the Body in Visual Anthropology" (2011), and "Performing Precision and the Limits of Observation" (2011, with Robert Wood). Current research involves a collaborative project with Robert Wood Dance on the choreographic process and relationships between speech and movement in the making of contemporary American concert dance. She is also working with actor, playwright, and Indigenous theater scholar Monique Mojica on 'Scoring the Body,' one component of a larger collaborative interdisciplinary approach to Indigenous performance research. Dr. Farnell is also active in applying anthropological knowledge to issues of social justice and human rights and serves on the Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.

Jonathan S. Marion received his PhD in sociocultural and psychological anthropology from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2006 and is currently an adjunct professor at California State University San Marcos and visiting scholar at UCSD. His research on competitive ballroom and salsa dancing extends to the U.S., U.K., and Europe and focuses on performance, embodiment, globalization, gender, dress, and activity-based constructions of personal and collective meanings and identities. Dr. Marion has published articles in Human Mosaic (2005), Suomen Antropologi (2007), and Visual Anthropology Review (2010). His photography features prominently in Ballroom: Culture and Costume in Competitive Dance (Berg, 2008) and Dance with Me: Ballroom Dancing and the Promise of Instant Intimacy (NYU Press, 2011), and he currently serves on the board of directors for the Society for Visual Anthropology (2008–11; 2012–14), as well as the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (2009–12) of the American Anthropological Association. Dr. Marion is also an amateur ballroom competitor, part-time photographer, and coadministrator of www.Dance-Forums.com and www.SalsaForums.com.

Emily Wilcox is visiting assistant professor of Chinese at the College of William and Mary. She also holds a nonresidential postdoctoral research fellow position in performance studies at the Shanghai Theater Academy, China. Dr. Wilcox received her PhD in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in May 2011. During 2008–9 she conducted research as a visiting graduate student in dance studies at the Beijing Dance Academy. Recent publications can be found in Asian Theatre Journal (forthcoming, 2012), Anthropology News (2009), Yihai (Art) (2009), the Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers (2008), and Body and Society (2005). Dr. Wilcox's doctoral dissertation, titled "The Dialectics of Virtuosity: Dance in the People's Republic of China 1949–2009," was published electronically in 2011 and is available through the Proquest/UMI dissertation database.

Helena Wulff is a professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research is in the anthropology of communication and aesthetics, based on a wide range of studies on the social worlds of literary production, dance, and the visual arts in a transnational perspective. Her current research is on writing and literature as cultural process and form, focusing on contemporary Irish writers as cultural translators and public intellectuals. She has conducted field studies in Stockholm, London, New York, Frankfurt-am-Main, and Ireland (mostly Dublin). She is chair of the Swedish Anthropological Association (EASA), and editor (with Jonathan Skinner) of the book series Dance and Performance Studies (Berghahn Press). She was editor-in-chief (with Dorle Dracklé) of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, the journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), and vice president of EASA. Among Dr. Wulff's publications are the monographs Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers (Berg 1998, reprinted 2001) and Dancing at the Crossroads: Memory and Mobility in Ireland (Berghahn 2007, paperback 2009); and the edited volumes The Emotions: A Cultural Reader (commissioned editor, Berg 2007), Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (with Vered Amit-Talai, Routledge, 1995), New Technologies at Work: People, Screens and Social Virtuality (with Christina Garsten, Berg 2003), and Ethnographic Practice in the Present (with Marit Melhuus and Jon P. Mitchell, Berghahn 2010). Her articles have appeared in journals such as Body & Society, Identities, Ethnography, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, and Ethnologie Française.