Emily Wilcox, Graduate Student

Anthropology, Medical Anthropology

Research

Working at the intersections of medical anthropology, performance theory, postcolonial theory, and science studies, she investigates the dance and performance art industries in post-Mao China as a site for thinking about how the processes of cultural efficacy and production of (aesthetic/economic/moral) value operate under conditions of drastic social transition. She is particularly interested in how the disciplined virtuosic subjects who come into being through China's institutions of dance education challenge modern assumptions about the relationships between mechanization and creativity, technology and art, constraint and self-realization.