As a PhD student in linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, I follow the efforts of West African dance artists to develop sustainable careers in the region, with a focus on Burkina Faso. Specifically, I inquire into how women are resignifying contemporary dance performances to make new economic and cultural spaces for gendered expressions and labor in West Africa. My interests in critical theory include the permutations and political deployments of the “culture” concept, in the discipline of anthropology, in anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles to the present, in development practice and theory, among performing arts practitioners, and in political economic thought via theorizations of cultural production, cultural diplomacy, cultural industry, cultural industries, creative economy, etcetera.
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