Dr. Gili Hammer Artist/Scholar Residency

Image courtesy of the speaker

Digital Presentation: “Performing Disability in Israel On and Off-stage: Blind Women’s Gender Performance and Integrated Dance.”

Disability culture broadens our understanding of what it means to be human, teaching us that social equity includes a recognition of the myriad ways and means of seeing, hearing, and moving. Dr. Gili Hammer addresses local and global aspects of disability culture through examples from two ethnographic studies, focused on gender formation among blind women in Israel and on integrated dance projects. These case studies bring together dancers with and without disabilities in Israel and the US, offering a view into the ways boundaries demarcating “us” from “them” can be negotiated in creative, artistic ways.

Dr. Gili Hammer is Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at Hebrew University, Jerusalem Israel. Her research focus is sight-impairment and dance artists in Israel.  Dr. Hammer is also an invited guest scholar (remote/digital) of the Jewish Studies Department/Bildner Center for Jewish Life at Rutgers and will also present (remote/digital) at the Dance Studies Association annual conference, held right here in New Brunswick, NJ.

For more information, please the Director of the Integrated Dance Collaboratory, Dr. Jeff Friedman at jfdance@rutgers.edu. This event is supported by the Mason Gross School of the Arts Integrated Dance Collaboratory. Registration required.