Conference Organizers

Dr. Naomi Jackson, Arizona State University   

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Naomi Jackson is an Associate Professor in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre at Arizona State University. Her books include: Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (co-edited with Toni Shapiro-Phim, Scarecrow Press), Right to Dance: Dancing for Rights (Banff Centre Press), and Converging Movements: Modern Dance and Jewish Culture at the 92nd Street Y (Wesleyan University Press). Her reviews and articles appear in such publications as Contact Quarterly, Dance Research Journal, Dance Chronicle and Dance Research. She has served as a member of the boards of the Society of Dance History Scholars, and Congress on Research in Dance, and organized the ground breaking International CORD Dance and Human Rights Conference in Montreal with Dena Davida in 2005. Her research focuses on ethics, human rights, social justice, Jewish studies, and contemporary trends in dance.

 

Liz Lerman, Arizona State University  

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Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2002 MacArthur "Genius Grant," a 2011 United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance, and a Deutsch Fellow. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in bothresearch and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and cultivated the company's unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance until 2011.

She was an artist-in-residence and visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2011, and her work, Healing Wars, toured across the US in 2014-15. Liz conducts residencies on Critical Response Process, creative research, the intersection of art and science, and the building of narrative within dance performance at such institutions as Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Theatre Studio, among others. Her collection of essays, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer, was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press and released in paperback in 2014. In 2016 Liz was named the first Institute Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University.