Examination arrangement

Course content

The module "Dance, displacement, diaspora I" which is run in parallel with "Dance, displacement, diaspora II" at the University of Szeged is envisaged as the contextual frame to interrogate issues of migration and heritage. This is an innovative part of Choreomundus 2020-2025 compared to Choreomundus 2012-2018 and 2017-2021. Registered separately in two partner universities for each group of students the course will be organised jointly for both groups sharing a virtual classroom and taught by all Choreomundus partner universities as well as Associated Partners. Our rationale for the course is the following: displaced people cannot take tangible heritage with themselves, they are forced to leave their homes, land etc. behind them. Yet wherever people move, either in refugee camps or in diaspora organisations, they find a way to re-invigorate their intangible heritage, as do those displaced and then returned to homeland. Memories, traditions, songs and dances do, however, travel, maintaining links to home and country of origin. In this new course we will focus on a range of case studies to address dancing communities in camps for displaced people, in diaspora or reconstituted localities. Moreover, the course problematises the ways in which contemporary performances of earlier dance forms are enacted and examines their contemporary transmission within global diasporas, thus questioning how heritage is continuously recreated

Learning outcome

Students who successfully complete this module will have acquired:

Kunnskaper

• An understanding of the fluidity of the concepts of dance heritage and community, diaspora and displacement
• Theory on learning and transmission of dance in the context of global migration

Ferdigheter

• Tools for the study of global transmission processes in dance education
• Methodological tools for netnographic research
• Principles in collecting of movement material from recordings and online ethnography

Learning methods and activities

Lectures, teaching in virtual a classroom, seminars and supervised practical and methodological exercises in small groups

Compulsory assignments

• Attendance

Further on evaluation

A 7.500 words essay (about 20 pages) based on online research (netnography) of a selected community. One may pick a community from one’s home country. A description of the community and an argument which proves that the community is a diasporic or a displaced one must be provided. An essay must be grounded in interviews and detailed dance descriptions. One must use the approaches, methods, types of sources, concepts, and so on presented by the teachers during the course. Analysis and discussion must be supported by appropriate readings, explicitly quoting a minimum of ten texts, some of which must be from the reading list. Appendices (e.g. interview transcriptions, analysis tables) are included in the word count and must be consistently referred to in the main text.

Specific conditions

Required previous knowledge

Admission to Choreomundus or Nordic Master in Dance studies