Spectacles of Agency and Desire: Dance Histories and the Burlesque Stage Main Menu

About the course

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The work gathered here was produced by students in Dance 4490: Special Topics in the Archive at The Ohio State University. The course, titled Spectacles of Agency and Desire: Dance Histories and the Burlesque Stage, was offered in Autumn 2015 and led by Professors Harmony Bench and Nena Couch with the assistance of Rachel Freeburg. The students in the course were Katherine Greer, Lilianna Kane, Maddie Leonard-Rose, Margaret Morrison, and Claire Staveski. The course featured materials from the renowned Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to Clubs at OSU.


Harmony Bench is Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University, where she teaches in the areas of Performance Studies, Media/Digital Humanities, and Dance. Selected publications include “Monstrous Belonging: Performing ‘Thriller’ After 9/11” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, “Gestural Choreographies: Embodied Disciplines and Mobile Media” in The Oxford Handbook to Mobile Music Studies, and “‘Single Ladies’ is Gay: Queer Performances and Mediated Masculinities on YouTube” in Dance on Its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies. Other writing can be found in Dance Research Journal, The International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Participations, and The International Journal of Screendance, for which she serves as co-editor. She is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Dance as Common: Movement as Belonging in Digital Cultures, as well as a digital humanities and database project called Mapping Touring, which focuses on the performance engagements of early 20th century dance companies. www.harmonybench.com

Nena Couch is Head of the OSU Libraries Thompson Library Special Collections, and Professor, The Ohio State University Libraries and Department of Theatre. Her publications include “Choreography and Cholera: The Extended Life of Dance Notation” (A Tyranny of Documents, PAR 28); Documenting: Lighting Design (co-edited with Susan Brady, PAR 25); The Humanities and the Library (co-edited with Nancy Allen); "Dance Collections" (Managing Performing Arts Collections in Academic and Public Libraries); articles in The International Dictionary of Modern Dance, A Core Collection in Dance, and others. With Karen Eliot, Nena adapted Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock as a Baroque-style ballet, and she was a founding member of the Baroque dance company, Les Menus Plaisirs. Awards include the Harvard Theatre Collection’s Howard D. Rothschild Fellowship for Research in Dance, the CIC Academic Leadership Program Fellow, and the TLA Distinguished Service in Performing Arts Librarianship. She has served on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts (SIBMAS), and is a member of the board of the Dance Heritage Coalition.

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  1. Table of Contents Harmony Bench

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