This lecture will discuss The Feet magazine (1970–1973), the first periodical dedicated entirely to the subject of Black dance, as the key forum for theorizing dance within the Black Arts Movement. Founded by dancer and activist Carole Y. Johnson, The Feet trained a cohort of Black dance critics, advertised performances and auditions, and built an archive of activity in the field. But it also offered a vital platform for Black dancers, teachers, and critics to debate the ideal “Black dance” aesthetic and discuss the political responsibilities of Black dancemakers in their particular place and time. Across its three years of publication, The Feet ultimately expounded an expansive definition of “Black dance” that embraced hybrid aesthetics, called for community engagement, and championed creative self-determination for Black artists. This talk will explore how, by combining action on the page and the stage, Black dance artists used embodied knowledge to generate new ideas about African American culture and elevate the dancing body as a tool for cultural education, community engagement, and universal communication.

Emily Hawk is a cultural historian of the twentieth-century United States. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.

Hawk’s research interests span dance history, intellectual history, and African American history. Her current book project is a study of Black modern dance in the 1960s and 1970s, encompassing the work of choreographers and dancers like Alvin Ailey, Rod Rodgers, Eleo Pomare, George Faison, and Carole Johnson. Hawk argues that this generation of Black dancemakers functioned as a cohort of public intellectuals, using the embodied language of movement to stake important claims about African American history, identity, and culture. By building an institutional infrastructure of publications, community-based workshops, and public-private partnerships, these dancemakers successfully shared their art and ideas with a national, multiracial audience during a moment of heightened social action and cultural revolution.

Hawk's scholarship has been published in the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of American Culture. She has also contributed to The Nation and History Today. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian Institution, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, the New York State Archives, the Stuart A. Rose Library, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. She has received the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award from the Dance Studies Association and the William M. Jones Award from the Popular Culture Association. She previously earned an M.A. in dance history from the University of Roehampton and a B.A. in dance and history from Franklin & Marshall College.

In fall 2024, Hawk will teach a course entitled “Dancing New York in the 20th Century,” which uses the works of choreographers, dancers, and critics to illuminate social, political, and cultural trends in New York's urban life across the 20th century.