Doug Risner

• PhD, MFA
• Professor | Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Wayne State University

ABSTRACT The authors' collaborative duoethnography explores autobiographical accounts of two male-identifying dance educators living with/through cancer. The authors generate and analyze two dominant themes—of cancer-specific recovery and life-centered discovery—in relation to their embodied and discursive constructions of masculinity and their shi...

Using an autoethnographic approach, this article focuses on the experiences of two male dance educators/researchers living with/through terminal cancer. Autoethnographers analyze their ‘unique life experiences in the context of the social and cultural institutions that have shaped the world the researcher inhabits.’ Drawn from a larger research pro...

This book critically examines matters of age and aging in relation to dance. As a novel collection of diverse authors’ voices, this edited book traverses the human lifespan from early childhood to death as it negotiates a breadth of dance experiences and contexts. The conversations ignited within each chapter invite readers to interrogate current d...

Special Issue: Teaching Artists in P12 Schools Jennifer McNamara, Doug Risner This special issue's afterword gathers central themes from preceding articles in the issue, including the wide range of P-12 teaching artists’ preparation, parity in the field (gender, genre, race, funding, etc.), professional challenges, and potential to reform supporti...

Doug Risner presents an autoethnographic essay premised on the ways that death and dying, as understood across a dancer’s lifespan and career transitions, uniquely prepared him not only for living with a terminal disease but also for dying a good death. His preparedness comes from experiencing a number of “deaths” or expiration dates over his caree...

Parenting while dancing, and dancing while parenting, require personal and highly individual choices that vary widely in terms of when and how dance professionals navigate becoming parents. Making the choice to parent can coincide with a significant portion of parents’ dance lifespans, commencing as early as late teens and twenties or later in midd...

Risner and Andersen present a case study derived from a larger qualitative study, “Why boys (don’t) dance: A qualitative inquiry of male retention in professional dance careers,” which investigates lived experiences of current and former male dancers (n = 113, age 23–65). Drawing upon data from an online survey and follow-up interviews, the chapter...

The primary aims of this qualitative interpretive inquiry were to gain better understanding of dance teaching artists’ preparation and preparedness, workplace challenges, and the role and impact of policy and regulations in P-12 schools. A secondary aim focused upon identifying school environments that support effective and purposeful dance teachin...

Based upon Paulo Freire’s theory of humanizing pedagogy and informed more recently by Freirean scholars Lilia Bartolomé and Maria del Carmen Salazar, this practice-based article provides two immersive learning experiences in which learners engage and question their educational histories, beliefs, and values, reflecting upon and unpacking their assu...

A dance company director working as a guest adjunct struggles to comply with a no-touch university policy that compromises her pedagogical values. Simultaneously, the dance department chair finds himself caught between his responsibility to support the new faculty member and his duty to report her non-compliance to the university.

A postsecondary dance educator must decide how to address a student’s adverse experiences of touch during contact improvisation without impinging upon other students’ experiences.

The first of its kind, this volume presents research-based fictionalized case studies from experts in the field of dance education, examining theory and practice developed from real-world scenarios that call for ethical decision-making. Dilemmas faced by dance educators in the studio, on stage, in recreation centers and correctional facilities, and...

This second article is a follow up in a series devoted to tenure and promotion processes in dance and dance education in the USA.

This professional development article focuses on the promotion and tenure dossier and the ways in which candidates can make their own best case. The authors look closely at three primary documents the candidate not only prepares but also possesses considerable control over in content, tone, and message. The Teaching Portfolio provides a forum for i...

Receiving tenure is among the most visible and valued symbols of achievement for university and college faculty in dance and dance education in the United States. At the same time, the tenure and promotion process is well known for its numerous and confusing guidelines and procedures, especially in the arts and dance, which often do not clearly ali...

This paper introduces a reflective methodology of the body as a resource for reflective practice based on an analysis of my personal response and experience of autobio- graphical narrative. It offers an approach in which the movements and markings of the body serve as important sites for collecting additional evidence of the daily practices that sh...

Dance in the U.S. university finds its beginnings in the visionary leadership of women. Since the mid-1910s, dance faculty and students in higher education have been predominantly female. Gender in postsecondary dance today remains much the same, with the exception of dance leadership, which is increasingly male. This narrative inquiry is drawn fro...

Chapter 1 introduces the relationship between dance and gender, inquiring into the ways dance is gendered in Western society today and the significance of these findings. An extensive review of literature covers feminist perspectives, social construction of gender, gender equity, men in dance, queer theory and GLBT studies, plus gender roles in mod...

Chapter 9 presents data from a larger mixed method empirical study that investigated the professional lives of administrative leaders in postsecondary dance programs in the United States, with the purpose of developing a status report on administrative leadership, with particular attention to gender. The study employed reviews of literature in post...

Driven by facts and hard data, this volume reveals how gender dynamics affect the lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, students, educators, and others who are involved in the world of dance. It unpacks real issues that matter--not just to dance communities but also to broader societal trends in the West. In these studies, dancers and dance...

A successful internship experience can provide invaluable learning experiences connecting students’ classroom knowledge to professional “know-how” in the field. Over the past three decades, post-secondary internship programs have flourished, generating considerable research literature from a variety of disciplinary perspectives; however, little is...

Preparing dance specialist teachers to successfully educate an increasingly diverse student population highlights a number of challenges within an educational policy landscape characterized by technical production, methods-centric teacher preparation, teacher-proof curriculum, and standardization. The ramifications of these policies have significan...

How do teaching artists perceive the need and usefulness of a credential program specifically designed for teaching artists in dance and theatre arts?

Today’s dance educators enter classrooms populated by increasingly diverse students in which teachers’ pedagogical knowledge necessitates heightened understandings of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality. Uncovering taken-for-granted assumptions, dominant stereotypes, and educational structures that reproduce social inequalities in...

Drawn from current research on web-based learning, this practical article presents applied research and informed applications for online dance educators engaged in undergraduate and graduate dance education course work. With a focus on written assessment feedback, the author provides a review of recent literature, an overview of written feedback ty...

This analysis (n = 33), drawn from the findings of the author’s larger mixed method research study, investigated bullying and harassment of adolescent male students (ages 13–18) pursuing dance study at the pre-professional level in the United States. Procedures for this analysis included review of primary and secondary sources from the internationa...

What leads a teaching artist to support and nurture the work of other teaching artists and specialist arts teachers?

How does a teaching artist in theatre describe critical educational events in her preparation and practice?

This paper investigates teaching artists in the USA whose work is rooted in dance and dance-related disciplines. Teaching artists, although the descriptor itself remains both ambiguous and debated in the USA, provide a good deal of arts education delivery in K12 schools and afterschool programs. Based on survey data from a range of dance teaching a...

What leads a teaching artist to find high levels of satisfaction in her life and work in dance?

This study investigates teaching artists whose work is rooted in dance and theater. Although the term remains both ambiguous and debated, teaching artists provide a good deal of arts education delivery in P–12 and afterschool programs throughout the United States. Based on survey data from a range of teaching artists across the nation (N = 133), th...

Postsecondary dance education is at a crucial juncture in its history in academe. Emerging from women's physical education programs in the 1930s, the profession's realignment with the arts broadly and arts-based education specifically has been characterized by ambitious goals and steady growth through the 1990s. However, a number of critical develo...

Postsecondary dance education is at a crucial juncture in its history in academe. Emerging from women’s physical education programs in the 1930s, the profession’s realignment with the arts broadly and arts-based education specifically has been characterized by ambitious goals and steady growth through the 1990s. However, a number of critical develo...

From a sociological perspective, Doug Risner explores the many biases and challenges boys and men in ballet face in the classroom and beyond. Themes revealed in case studies and analysis include gender norms, heterocentric biases, isolation, peer pressure, lack of positive male role models and parental support, sexual harassment, and the lack of su...

The authors describe a model for teaching research and writing to graduate students in dance that they have been implementing and refining for the past five years. The model entwines scholarship, teaching, and artistry. Dils and Stinson reflect on two issues that arise from their teaching: embodiment as it relates to dance research and to online le...

Given our panel's focus, I will introduce myself by way of my undergraduate dance pedagogy course and highlight what I will be addressing in my remarks this morning. The young women in my dance pedagogy course bring considerable experience in modern, ballet, and jazz technique and are equally skilled as young performers. These students likely repre...

Dance education researchers interested in pedagogy have drawn considerable energy from the area of social foundations in education, especially in terms of schooling and its impact on gender identity. Borrowing from feminist thought, critical theory, gender studies, critical pedagogy, and most recently, men's studies, dance pedagogy literature has b...

Postsecondary dance education is at a crucial juncture in its history in academe. Emerging from women's physical education programs in the 1930s, the profession's realignment with the arts broadly and arts-based education specifically has been characterized by ambitious goals and steady growth through the 1990s. However, a number of critical develo...

These short essays address the political nature of teaching dance in higher education from various perspectives. Issues of identity, authority, power, expectation, and assumption are addressed within the context of the teacher-student paradigm. From personal perspectives, each author examines the ways in which who they are affects what and how they...

Although the technological methods in which dance artists create, develop, document and present their work have grown significantly over the past two decades, technology education in undergraduate dance curricula in the US often remains peripheral. Some dance programs in higher education, especially those with graduate programs, now include a gener...

Dance in a World of Change: Reflections on Globalization and Cultural Difference will help you - understand how dance instruction is affected by globalization; - discover the ways in which the discourse and curriculum of dance connect it to the critical, political, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of contemporary society; and - learn from the rich a...

Dance education experiences of boys and male youth are investigated in terms of dominant constructions of contemporary Western masculinity and the potential limitations these hegemonic discourses may place on male participation. Recent research on boys and male youth in dance, although limited, suggests prevailing social stigma, heteronormative ass...

From an administrative perspective, this article investigates equity issues in dance education, and current challenges and opportunities for leadership in postsecondary dance programs involved in teacher education and certification. Although dance education is varied in content and environment, much is shared in terms of common goals for gender equ...

This panel presentation explores dance education experiences of boys and men as a form of cultural resistance and as an important means for sharing a more common humanity through movement and expression. Recent discourses on male youth in dance indicate prevailing social stigmatization, heteronormative assumptions, narrow definitions of masculinity...

A pilot research project was conducted to address issues related to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in dance in higher education. The primary goals were to summarize the impact of HIV/AIDS on dance and dance education, to document the profession's response (research, curricula, programs, interventi...

The ways in which seven private sector dance professionals in the United States perceive the impact of sexuality in contemporary culture and the choices that they make for their own schools of dance because of these perceptions are explored. This study was conducted through in-depth interviews and a survey instrument. The participants' narratives r...

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive discussion of sexuality and dance education from multiple perspectives including public schools (K-12), private studios, conservatories, and higher education. Among innumerable potential topics emanating from this review of sexuality and dance education in the 21st century, this article focuses on today's...

While recent research in the United States indicates that gay and bisexual men comprise half the male population in dance, a very limited amount of scholarship focuses on the experiences of gay men and boys in dance education (Hamilton 1999). Cultural heterosexism and homophobia certainly contribute to this conspicuous absence of scholarship and di...

This article explores the ways in which gay male presence and contribution to dance education in the US is minimised in order to legitimate male participation and to gain wider social acceptance of dance. Current muted discourses regarding homosexuality in dance pedagogy are not only shortsighted, but also unwittingly reproduce narrow stereotypes o...

This interpretive inquiry explores the ways in which young adult males experience and make meaning of the social stigmatization associated with men in dance. General procedures for this study include interviews, confidential surveys, and field observations with six undergraduate male students (three self-identified as heterosexual, two as gay, one...

This paper introduces a reflective methodology of the body as a resource for reflective practice based on an analysis of my personal response and experience of autobiographical narrative. It offers an approach in which the movements and markings of the body serve as important sites for collecting additional evidence of the daily practices that shap...

This interpretive inquiry explores the construction of knowledge by dancers in the rehearsal process. Although seemingly primary to the act of choreography, the dancers' experiences of the choreographic process have not been explored fully. Though often neglected, the dancers' experience of rehearsal warrants further investigation for dance educato...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-173). Microfilm.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1990. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 43). Microfilm. s