Michelle Kisliuk
· Associate Professor (Critical & Comparative Studies)University of Virginia · Music
Active 1988–2023
About
Michelle Kisliuk is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Virginia, specializing in ethnographic research with BaAka forest people in the Central African Republic, focusing on musical life, dance, and the arts and politics of everyday life. Her research also includes African popular musics and American bluegrass. Her conceptual interests encompass sound and listening studies, improvisation, play, dance and gesture, Jewish identities (including African Jews), performance theory, conceptual and experimental performance and art, climate and environmental activism as they intersect with creative and expressive practices, and the politics of indigeneity among African hunter-foragers. She aims to disrupt essentialisms, hierarchies, and binaries such as art/life, theory/practice, tradition/modernity, and binaries related to race, gender, and class, emphasizing processes over objects. Kisliuk teaches courses that connect practice to students' lives and contemporary politics, including issues of representation, racism, and privilege, and she has co-led a Mellon lab in Embodied Creative Practices focused on the global south. Her published works include the book 'Seize the Dance! BaAka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Performance' and a forthcoming co-edited volume on ethnography, race, gender, and vulnerability.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- Gender studies
- Art
- Geography
Selected publications
Ethnography and its Double(s): Theorizing the Personal with Jews in Ghana
2023-04-18
other1st authorCorrespondingNot to mine it or use it. Not to appropriate it or reduce it. But to creatively, feelingfully, critically position what is relevantly personal and interpersonal. It might seem at first that theorizing and the personal are at odds, and that intersubjectivity is unknowable. There is a legacy—an affliction— that asserts these binaries. But once we understand how the personal infuses everything we know whether or not we show it or even recognize it, and once we allow for embodied, empirical ethnographic scholarship to also be intermodal, contrapuntal, and co-present—to become creative nonfiction, performance art, and collective creation—the false dichotomies evaporate. What is unapologetically human then exposes and expels the stifling pedant in our midst. Released, we can stride ahead baring our gaps and mistakes. Embracing our stumbles and bumbles, we can delve into vulnerable and open questions—tumbling into the unplanned lessons we most urgently need.
10. ethnography and its double(s) // theorizing the personal with Jews in Ghana
Boydell and Brewer eBooks · 2023
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Sociology
- Anthropology
2023
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Sociology
- Art
New York University Press eBooks · 2022
- Geography
colleagues, mentors, coaches, and the social memory and lived experiences of African Americans, both female and male.It has been full of ups and downs, but
BaAka Singing in a State of Emergency:
University of Illinois Press eBooks · 2019-04-30
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingChapter 14. What’s the “It” That We Learn to Perform? Teaching BaAka Music and Dance
2019-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingEthnomusicology · 2019-06-11
article1st authorCorrespondingBook Review| July 01 2019 Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of CongoKwaito’s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo. Chérie Rivers Ndaliko. 2016. New York: Oxford University Press. xix, 285 pp., photographs, table, notes, bibliography, filmography, index, companion website.Kwaito’s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa. Gavin Steingo. 2016. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xix, 307 pp., photographs, charts, transcriptions, notes, references, index. Michelle Kisliuk Michelle Kisliuk University of Virginia Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnomusicology (2019) 63 (2): 331–339. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.63.2.0331 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Michelle Kisliuk; Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of CongoKwaito’s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa. Ethnomusicology 1 January 2019; 63 (2): 331–339. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.63.2.0331 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressEthnomusicology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World · 2016-01-01
other1st authorCorrespondingPopulation: 3,844,000 (2003) The Central African Republic (République Centrafricaine, also Centrafrique) is a landlocked country of 243,351 sq miles (622,980 sq km) bordered by Chad to the north, Cameroon to the west, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest, the Democratic Repu
A poética e a política da prática
Educação (UFSM) · 2014-11-05
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondinghttp://dx.doi.org/10.5902/1984644414780O presente ensaio, de caráter etnográfico, discorre sobre a relação entre poética e política na performance; parte do pressuposto que as artes ativistas, tais como a música e a dança podem constituir, junto à escolarização, a base política, intelectual e estética de uma dada comunidade. Tais práticas, contudo, apresentam-se como sendo de risco. O texto realiza, ainda, uma tentativa de aproximação entre tais práticas – no que se refere à sua função e consequências - no contexto de uma comunidade africana e em instituições de ensino superior nos Estados Unidos. A escrita interativa e performativa pretende, ao fim e ao cabo, materializar um intercâmbio entre pesquisador de campo e as pessoas com quem trabalha, como também, representar e evocar o material e as ideias de que trata a pesquisadora.
A poética e a política da prática: experiência, incorporação e o compromisso da escolaridade
Redalyc (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México) · 2014-01-01
article1st authorCorresponding"O presente ensaio, de caráter etnográfico, discorre sobre a relação entre poética e política na performance; parte do pressuposto que as artes ativistas, tais como a música e a dança podem constituir, junto à escolarização, a base política, intelectual e estética de uma dada comunidade. Tais práticas, contudo, apresentam - se como sendo de risco. O texto realiza, ainda, uma tentativa de aproximação entre tais práticas – no que se refere à sua função e consequências - no contexto de uma comunidade africana e em instituições de ensino superior nos Estados Unidos. A escrita interativa e performativa pretende, ao fim e ao cabo, materializar um intercâmbio entre pesquisador de campo e as pessoas com quem trabalha, como também, representar e evocar o material e as ideias de que trata a pesquisadora."
Frequent coauthors
- 4 shared
Jessica Feldman
New York University
- 4 shared
Scott DeVeaux
New York University
- 4 shared
Michael Beckerman
- 4 shared
Linda Tucker
New York University
- 4 shared
Cindy Wall
University of Virginia
- 4 shared
Suzanne G. Cusick
- 4 shared
Adria La Violette
- 4 shared
Ed Ayers
University of Virginia
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