Michelle Kisliuk

My doctorate is in a field called Performance Studies, that blends creative practices and anthropological inquiry. My main goal in the classroom is for us to establish together an environment wherein we focus on what matters right now, and improvise within our immediate present moment, while also learning from each other’s experiences. The tools we use are interactive, often musical, often playful (possibly in the most serious way), giving us the chance to make a fully human, embodied, intellectual community. I draw on and share what I have learned in years of research with forest people in Central Africa, in musical life, dance, listening, and the arts of the everyday. If we need to deconstruct the classroom we will do it, if we need to exit the classroom, we will. And we will read and we will write, we will sing and make things together in fully embodied ways. All I ask of students is to be open to themselves, to each other, and to me as we explore ideas and imagine new realities.