Prof. Dr. Jane Desmond
Teaching at the University of Goettingen as Visiting Fulbright Professor, Summer Term, 2022
Permanent
appointment as Professor of Anthropology and of Gender/Women’s Studies
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. (UIUC).
Previous positions at the University of Iowa, Duke University, Cornell
University, as Otto Salgo Chair in American Studies at Eotvos Lorand
University in Budapest, as Eminent World Scholar Visiting Professor at
Beijing Foreign Studies University. Co-founder and Executive Director
of the International Forum for U.S. Studies: A Center for the
Transnational Study of the United States, now located at UIUC, and Past
President, the International American Studies Association. Founding
Editor, Animal Lives Book Series, at the University of Chicago Press, and co-founding editor, Global Studies of the United States Book Series at the University of Illinois Press, with Dr. Virginia Dominguez.
Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University, 1993
My research focuses broadly on issues relating to embodiment and
identity, both in the actions of everyday life and in artistic
performance, especially dance, and on visuality and display. I have
written extensively on tourism and performance from a postcolonial
perspective, on human-animal relations, on the transnational study of
the United States, and most recently on the medical humanities when the
focus is on veterinary medicine. My current book project is titled:
Medicine Across the Species Line: Cultural Dimensions of Veterinary
Clinical Medicine in the United States.
2016 Author, Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science and Everyday Life, University of Chicago Press. 333 pages. CHOICE Recommended selection. Reviewed on NPR.
1999 Author, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Nov. 1999.
2017 Co-Editor, with Virginia Dominguez. Global Perspectives on the United States: Pro-Americanism, Anti-Americanism, and the Discourses Between (University of Illinois Press, spring 2017) 330 pages.
2001 Editor, Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexuality on and off the Stage Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Society of Dance History Scholars Series.
1997 Editor , Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance Durham: Duke University Press.
Post-Contemporary Interventions Series, Fredric Jameson and Stanley Fish, series editors. In third printing.
Reviews of these books have appeared in American Quarterly; American Studies; The Contemporary Pacific; Dance Research Journal; Signs; Theatre Journal; Journal of American Folklore; CHOICE; Theatre Survey; American Anthropologist; TDR:The Drama Review (Performance Studies); Journal of Canadian Literature, Journal of Dance Education; Hawaiian Journal of History; Pacific Studies, among other journals. Also reviewed on NPR, and in newspaper Metro Times (Detroit) and in the Queer Caucus for Art Newsletter, and College and Research Library News.
In print:
Editor, “Special Issue on Legacies of 1898: Revisiting U.S. Colonialisms,” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, June 2007 (120 pages).
Looking North: Latin American Scholarship on the U.S. in International Perspective. Co-edited with Sonia Torres, Universidade Federale Fluminense, Brazil. Published by Contracapa Press, Rio, Brazil, as a special issue of Transit Circle, Journal of the Brazilian American Studies Association. In English, with Spanish and Portuguese abstracts. 175 pages. 2010.
Founding Executive Editor of Book Series: “Animal Lives” at University of Chicago Press, launched 2013—to present.
Co-Editor of Book Series: Global Studies of the United States, University of Illinois Press, launched 2010—to present.
In Print:
> 2019 “Zones of Production in Possible Worlds: Dance’s Precarious Placement, An Afterword,” in Dance Research Journal, special issue on precarity and dance, Vol. 59-#1, April. (10 pages)
> 2019 “Vivacious Remains: An Afterword on Taxidermy’s Forms, Fictions, Facticity, and Futures,” in Configurations: Journal of Literature, Science and the Arts (27): 255-264.
> 2014 “Ethnography as Ethics and Epistemology: Why American Studies Should Embrace Fieldwork and Why it Hasn’t,” American Studies vol. 53: 1, 2014: 27-56. > 2010 “Orientalism and American Studies” in Chinese Journal of American Studies, published in Chinese translation, fall, 2010, c. 15 pages. This is the leading journal of American Studies in China.
> 2008 “Postmortem Exhibitions: Taxidermied Animals and Plastinated Corpses in the Theaters of the Dead,” in Configurations: Journal of Science and Literature, vol.16, #3, pp: 347-378.
> 2003 “Transnational American Studies: Limits to Collaboration” in American Studies International.
> 2002 “Mapping American Studies Across National Boundaries,” in The Hungarian Journal of American Studies, summer.
> 1999 "Picturing Hawai'i: The 'Ideal' Native and the Origins of Tourism (1880-1915)." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Vol. 7, No. 2 (fall): 459-502.
> 1999 "Towards a Political Economy of American Studies: Reports from an Experiment in Process," in Through the Looking Glass: American Studies in Transcultural Perspective, European Contributions to American Studies, Vol. 40, Amsterdam, pp. 196-215.
> 1997 "Invoking the Native: Body Politics in Hawaiian Tourist Shows," TDR (The Drama Review): The Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4, winter, 1997, pps. 83-109.
> 1996 "Resituating American Studies in a Critical Internationalism." co-authored, Jane Desmond and Virginia Dominguez. American Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3, Sept. 1996, pp. 475-490.
> 1994 "Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies," Cultural Critique, Vol. 26, winter, 1993-1994, pp. 33-64.
- (2003) Reprinted in Philip Auslander Performance Studies.
- (1998) Reprinted in: The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, Alexandra Carter, Ed. (London: Routledge): 154-162.
- (1997): Reprinted in: Every-night Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, Delgado and Esteban Munoz, eds., (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 33-64.
> 1993 "Where is 'The Nation?': Public Discourse, the Body, and Visual Display," East/West Film Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2, July, 1993, pp. 81-109.
> 1991 "Dancing out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis' 'Radha' of 1906," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1, (Autumn, 1991), pp. 28-49.
- (2001) Reprinted in: Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, Eds. Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press): 256-270.
- (1997): Reprinted in: History and Theory: Feminist Research, Debates, Contestations, edited by Laslett, Joeres, et. al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 254-275.
- (1993): Reprinted in: Revising the Word and the World: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism, Eds. Veve Clark, Ruth-Ellen Joeres, Madelen Sprengnether, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1993, pp. 191-212.
- (1993): Reprinted in: Writings on Dance, Vol. 9, "Thinking Through Feminism," Autumn, 1993, Victoria, Australia, pp. 40-54.
> 1989 "How I Met Miss Tootie: The Home Shopping Club," Cultural Studies, Vol.3, No. 3, (October, 1989), pp. 340-347.
Book Chapters:
> 2021 "Up in Smoke: Cremation and the Afterlives of Animals" in Animal Remains, Eds. Sarah Bezan et al, (Palgrave, 2021)
> 2017 “Thinking about Talking about Writing about…’Animals’, An Afterword” in Beyond the Human-Animal Divide: Creaturely Lives in Literature and Culture, Edited by Roman Bartosch and Dominik Orhem, Palgrave MacMillan.
> 2017 “Extreme Animal Tourism: Staging Privilege and Proximity,” for Linda Kalof, Editor, Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. (Oxford U. Press). ( 30 pages.) (online publication 2016, final book publication, spring 2017).
> 2017 “Staging the Political Economy of Dance,” for Martin and Kowal, eds., Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics, commissioned by Oxford U. Press). (30 pages). Published, Spring 2017.
> 2017 “Ambivalence, Ambiguity, and the ‘Wicked Problem’ of Pacific Tourist Studies—An Afterword,” in Touring Pacific Cultures, Eds. Kalissa Alexeyev and John Taylor, Australian National University Press, released spring 2017.
> 2017 “The Sounds of Silence: Commissions, Omissions, and Particularity in the Global Anthropology of the United States—An Afterword” in America Observed: Global Anthropology of the United States, Eds. Jasmine Habib and Virginia R. Dominguez, Berghann Books, Publisher. Spring 2017: pp. 164-172.
> 2016 “’And Never the Twain Shall Meet?’: Considering the Legacies of Orientalism and Occidentalism for the Transnational Study of the U.S.”, in Armin Paul Frank and Marietta Messmer, eds. The International Turn In American Studies ( Peter Lang Publishers, Switzerland) 2016..(first English language publication of a piece that originally appeared in Chinese translation only, in 2009/10.)
> 2015 Three of my previously published articles were translated into Korean (“Dancing out the Difference,” “Dance and Cultural Studies: Terre Incognita,” and “Embodying Difference”), and appeared in the book: Dance and Cultural Studies, edited by Suein Kim and Hyanjung Kim, Published by Sangkyunkwan University Press, South Korea.
> 2014 “Kinesthetic Intimacies,” commentary on Kim Marra’s “Horseback Views”, in Animal Acts: Performing Species Today, Chaudhuri, U. and Holly Hughes, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014): 131-139.
> 2013 “Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America’s Roads,” in Kopnina and Shoremann-Ouimet, eds.,Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions (New York: Routledge, 2013) 46-58.
> 2012 “Can Animals Make “Art”?: Popular and Scientific Discourses About Expressivity and Cognition in Primates,” . In Smith, J. and Robert Mitchell, eds., Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Human-Animal Encounters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012): 95-110.
> 2011 “Animal Deaths and the Written Record of History The Politics of Pet Obituaries,” in Kalof and Montgomery editor, Making Animal Meaning (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011): 99-112.
> 2009 “Touring the Dead: Imagination, Embodiment, and Affect in Gunter Von Hagen’s Body Worlds Exhibitions,” in Great Expectations: Tourism and the Imagination, 2011, U.K., Berghan Press.
> 2007 “What’s Performance Got to do with it?” Americana: E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary (vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2007) (americanaejournal.hu) Interviewed by Eva Federmayer.
> 2007 “Towards a Prismatic ‘American Studies’” in Safundi:
The Journal of South African and American Studies, (Routledge), Vol. 8, No. 1, January: 5-14.
> 2007 “Legacies of 1898: US Imperialism in a Multi-sited Historical Perspective, Comparative American Studies, Introduction to Special Issue, Vol. 5, No. 2, June, 115-118.
> 2007 Book Review Forum on Staging Tourism in Pacific Studies Journal. A multi-reviewer discussion of my book, with author’s response, Pacific Studies Journal, Vol. 29, Nos.1/2 (March/June 2006): 159-175.
> 2004: “Fetishizing the Foreign at the Whitney” Extended review essay of international art exhibit commissioned by American Quarterly, Dec. 2004: 56:4:1051-1066.
> 2002: “Displaying Death, Animating Life: Fictions of Liveness from Taxidermy to Animatronics,” in Nigel Rothfells, ed., Representing Animals (University of Illinois Press, 2002): 159-179..
> 2001: "Making the Invisible Visible: Staging Sexualities through Dance,"in Desmond, Ed., Dancing Desires (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,): 3-32.
> 2001: “New Approaches to American Studies Scholarship: Doing Performance Studies at ‘Home’ and ‘Abroad’,” in Rediscovering America: American Studies in the New Century, Kousar Azam, editor. (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers): 89-101.
> 2001: Prologue: “’America’ and the Changing Object of Study,” co-authored with Virginia Dominguez, in Rediscovering America, as above: 14-24.
> 2000: "Terras Incognita: Mapping New Territory in Dance and ‘Cultural Studies’" Dance Research Journal, 32:1, Summer,2000: 43-53 Commissioned.
> 1999 "Engendering Dance: Feminist Inquiry and Dance Research," in Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry, eds. Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press,: 309-334. Commissioned.
> 1997 "Introduction," in my Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, Duke University Press, 1997, pps. 1-25.
> 1995 "Performing Nature: Shamu at Sea World," in Cruising the the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality. Eds., Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, Susan Foster, Indiana University Press, pps. 217-236.
> 2017 “Thinking about Talking about Writing about…’Animals’, An Afterword” in Beyond the Human-Animal Divide: Creaturely Lives in Literature and Culture, Edited by Roman Bartosch and Dominik Orhem, Palgrave MacMillan.
> 2017 “Extreme Animal Tourism: Staging Privilege and Proximity,” for Linda Kalof, Editor, Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. (Oxford U. Press). ( 30 pages.) (online publication 2016, final book publication, spring 2017).
> 2017 “Staging the Political Economy of Dance,” for Martin and Kowal, eds., Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics, commissioned by Oxford U. Press). (30 pages). Published, Spring 2017.
> 2017 “Ambivalence, Ambiguity, and the ‘Wicked Problem’ of Pacific Tourist Studies—An Afterword,” in Touring Pacific Cultures, Eds. Kalissa Alexeyev and John Taylor,, Australian National University Press, released spring 2017.
> 2017 “The Sounds of Silence: Commissions, Omissions, and Particularity in the Global Anthropology of the United States—An Afterword” in America Observed: Global Anthropology of the United States, Eds. Jasmine Habib and Virginia R. Dominguez, Berghann Books, Publisher. Spring 2017: pp. 164-172.
> 2016 “’And Never the Twain Shall Meet?’: Considering the Legacies of Orientalism and Occidentalism for te Transnational Study of the U.S.”, in Armin Paul Frank and Marietta Messmer, eds. The International Turn In American Studies ( Peter Lang Publishers, Switzerland) 2016. (first English language publication of a piece that originally appeared in Chinese translation only, in 2009/10.)
> 2015 Three of my previously published articles were translated into Korean (“Dancing out the Difference,” “Dance and Cultural Studies: Terre Incognita,” and “Embodying Difference”), and appeared in the book: Dance and Cultural Studies, edited by Suein Kim and Hyanjung Kim, Published by Sangkyunkwan University Press, South Korea.
> 2014 “Kinesthetic Intimacies,” commentary on Kim Marra’s “Horseback Views”, in Animal Acts: Performing Species Today, Chaudhuri, U. and Holly Hughes, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014): 131-139.
> 2013 “Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America’s Roads,” in Kopnina and Shoremann-Ouimet, eds., Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions (New York: Routledge, 2013) 46-58.
> 2012 “Can Animals Make “Art”?: Popular and Scientific Discourses About Expressivity and Cognition in Primates,” . In Smith, J. and Robert Mitchell, eds., Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Human-Animal Encounters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012): 95-110.
> 2011 “Animal Deaths and the Written Record of History: The Politics of Pet Obituaries,” in Kalof and Montgomery editor, Making Animal Meaning (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011): 99-112.
> 2009 “Touring the Dead: Imagination, Embodiment, and Affect in Gunter Von Hagen’s Body Worlds Exhibitions,” in Great Expectations: Tourism and the Imagination, 2011, U.K., Berghan Press.
> 2007 “What’s Performance Got to do with it?” Americana: E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary (vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2007) (americanaejournal.hu) Interviewed by Eva Federmayer.
> 2007 “Towards a Prismatic ‘American Studies’” in Safundi:
The Journal of South African and American Studies, (Routledge), Vol. 8, No. 1, January: 5-14.
> 2007 “Legacies of 1898: US Imperialism in a Multi-sited Historical Perspective, Comparative American Studies, Introduction to Special Issue, Vol. 5, No. 2, June, 115-118.
> 2007 Book Review Forum on Staging Tourism in Pacific Studies Journal. A multi-reviewer discussion of my book, with author’s response, Pacific Studies Journal, Vol. 29, Nos.1/2 (March/June 2006): 159-175.
> 2004: “Fetishizing the Foreign at the Whitney” Extended review essay of international art exhibit commissioned by American Quarterly, Dec. 2004: 56:4:1051-1066.
> 2002: “Displaying Death, Animating Life: Fictions of Liveness from Taxidermy to Animatronics,” in Nigel Rothfells, ed., Representing Animals (University of Illinois Press, 2002):159-179..
> 2001: "Making the Invisible Visible: Staging Sexualities through Dance," in Desmond, Ed., Dancing Desires (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,): 3-32.
> 2001: “New Approaches to American Studies Scholarship: Doing Performance Studies at ‘Home’ and ‘Abroad’,” in Rediscovering America: American Studies in the New Century, Kousar Azam, editor. (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers): 89-101.
> 2001: Prologue: “’America’ and the Changing Object of Study,” co-authored with Virginia Dominguez, in Rediscovering America, as above: 14-24.
> 2000: "Terras Incognita: Mapping New Territory in Dance and ‘Cultural Studies’" Dance Research Journal, 32:1, Summer, 2000: 43-53 Commissioned.
> 1999 "Engendering Dance: Feminist Inquiry and Dance Research," in Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry, eds. Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press,: 309-334. Commissioned.
> 1997 "Introduction," in my Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, Duke University Press, 1997, pps. 1-25.
> 1995 "Performing Nature: Shamu at Sea World," in Cruising the the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality. Eds., Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, Susan Foster, Indiana University Press, pps. 217-236.
> On camera interview: for Filmmaker and chorerographer Ann Collod, Jan. 2021, for forthcoming film and web series funded by French Ministry of Culture, “AlterNatives” a revisioning of modern dance history, postcolonial visions of Ruth St. Denis.
> Op-Eds in Newsweek 2019); Scientific American (2020); The Hill (2019,2020),
> Medical Humanities public writings (Writer in Residence 2020-2021 Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal_ Columbia University.:
> Desmond, Jane. “The Tiger in the Waiting Room: Addressing Moral Stress in Medicine,” in Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal (Columbia University), www.medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/08/08/the-tiger-in-the-waiting-room-addressing-moral-stress-in-medicine/
posted Aug.8, 2021.
> Desmond, Jane. “Real Doctors Treat More than One Species: Modeling Medical Creativity,” in Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal (Columbia University), www.medicalhealthhumanities.com/2021/04/12/real-doctors-treat-more-than-one-species-modeling-medical-creativity/ posted April 12, 2021.
> Desmond, Jane. “Towards a More-than-Human Medical Humanities,” in Synapsis: A Hea Dominguez. Review essay on politics of exhibitions. American Anthropologist, 97:4:779-782.lth Humanities Journal (Columbia University),www.medicalhealthhumanities.com/2020/12/05/towards-a-more-than-human-medical-humanities-an-invitation-and-provocation/
posted Dec. 5, 2020.
> Radio interview, 1 hour, WWDB, Philadelphia, The Other Animals_ Laurent Levy, Jan. 17, 2020.> CNN.COM (“The other Victim of the Opiod Crisis,” Op Ed. May, 2018.
> Podcast Interview (45 minutes): “Delving into Dance” Podcast Series, Interviewed on issues in contemporary dance by dance journalist Andrew Westle,
Available at http: www.delvingintodance.com/podcast/jane-desmond Oct, 2018.
> Washington Post. Com (“Art by Animals?”): Essay. Animalia section. August 2016.
> Huffington Post (“Should Animals be Soldiers?) Opinion piece. 2012.
> Cited in NYTimes “Animal Studies Moves from the Lab to the Lecture Hall,” quoted in , 1/03/2012, James Gorman.
> 2019 “Anthropologies of (Veterinary) Medicine,” Czech Institute of Ethnology, Prague, Czechoslovakia, May 16.
> 2019 “Medical Humanities across the Species Line: When the patient is a Dog, or Cow, or Parrot,” University of Glasgow invited lecture, Medical Humanities Network, Glasgow, Scotland, April 3, 2019.
> 2018 “Transdisciplinary Collaborative Work in a More than Human World,” invited address to the humanities faculty at Koln University, Koln, Germany. November.
> 2018 “Transnational Hunters and Killing Polar Bears in Canada,” Border Studies Program invited lecture, University of Saarsland, Saarbruken, Germany. November.
> 2018 “Cockatoos and Choreography: Dancing in a more than human world,” Cultural Studies Program invited lecture, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. November.
> 2018 “Poetry as Ethnography,” invited lecture, Erlanger University, Erlanger, Germany. November.
> 2018 “Exploring the Clinic in a More than Human World” Orientale Summer School in American Studies, Plenary lecture, Procida, Italy, May.
> 2017 “When the Patient is a Dog,” British Animal Studies Network plenary lecture, October, University of Southampton, UK.
> 2016 Temple University Dance Department, Resident Scholar lecture, “Dance and the Non-Human Turn,” October, 2016.