Dr Amita Nijhawan

 

Job Title: Lecturer Email Address: amita.nijhawan@roehampton.ac.uk

Amita is a Lecturer, First Year Tutor and Admissions Tutor in the Dance Department.
She teaches on various BA and MA modules. Her teaching interests include the relationship of dance with issues of gender and sexuality in contemporary dance practice, diaspora, globalization, dance on screen, site-specific work, creative writing and cultural perspectives in dance. She is a qualified Yoga and Pilates (REP Level 3) teacher, and a Kathak practitioner.

Amita completed her PhD at the University of California, Riverside, where she studied the impact of globalization on dance in Indian popular culture, the fashion and beauty industry and music television in India. In this research, she analysed popular dance practices in India, off- and on-screen, especially in relation to emerging trends in the production of femininity and female sexuality. Her current research looks at contemporary South Asian dance in London, the construction of nostalgia in the diaspora, the placement of women in mainstream and diasporic culture, and the configuration of British identity.

Amita's articles appear in Performance Art Journal, Pulse magazine, Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, Body and Society and Media/Culture Journal. She has presented and moderated conference papers at Performance Studies International, Popular Culture Association, Disjunctions, and others.

Publications

(2009) Critical Book Review: Judith Butler: Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative by Gill Jagger, London; New York: Routledge 2008, Body and Society, 15, 121-126.

(2009) Dancing With or Without You, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 31:2.

(2009) Excusing the Female Dancer: Tradition and Transgression in Bollywood Dancing, South Asian Popular Culture, 7:2, 99-112.

(2008) De-ciphering , Pulse magazine, September.

(2008) Yearning for Oneness, Pulse magazine, December.

(2006) Damning the Flow: Deepa Mehta's Water, Media/Culture Journal, 9:4.