Natalie Zervou
Natalie Zervou is Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison Dance Department. She is a dance studies scholar and ethnographer whose work focuses on the intersection between dance practices and the socio-political sphere. Her academic essays have been published in international peer-reviewed journals and anthologies. At UW Madison she is teaching courses in Dance Studies, Dance History, Dance and Gender, as well as Political and Cultural perspectives in dance. Currently she is working on her first book manuscript which explores the ways that dancing bodies negotiate national identity construction in the fluctuating landscape of the (2009-2019) socio-political and economic crisis in Greece.
Abstracts
The Greek Body in Crisis: Contemporary Dance as a Site of Negotiating and Restructuring National Identity in the Era of Precarity
This doctoral dissertation explores the development of Greek contemporary dance practices as a site for engaging with national identity construction during the recent (2009-2015) sociopolitical and financial crisis. Following archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the financial crisis has become an opportunity to reassess and challenge rooted beliefs concerning the composition of national, cultural, and social identity in Greece through artistic practices. The structuring axes of this work are the discourses of ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Greekness’, which are understood as two contrasting theoretical approaches to nationalism that inform contemporary Greek identity construction. Utilizing contemporary dance as a lens into a society that has been severely affected by the global financial crisis, this study raises questions about how national identity is critically examined and re-evaluated during the austerity era. It aspires to serve as a framework for the ways that crises directly affect people’s bodies not just on a material, corporeal level, but also on a phenomenological one
Title |
Assistant Professor – Dance Department, University of Wisconsin Madison |
Level |
PhD in Critical Dance Studies |
Thesis |
The Greek Body in Crisis: Contemporary Dance as a Site of Negotiating and Restructuring National Identity in the Era of Precarity |
Contact |
zervou@wisc.edu |
