Paul Scolieri, associate professor of dance, is the winner of the 2014 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research for his first book, Dancing the New World: Aztecs, Spaniards, and the Choreography of Conquest. The Brockett Book Prize is an annual award by the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD), honoring the best book in dance scholarship during the previous three years.
Dancing the New World is the inaugural publication of the University of Texas Press' Latin American & Caribbean Performance Series, which is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The book is a groundbreaking study of the representations of indigineous dance in the sixteenth century, tracing the transformation of the Aztec empire into a Spanish colony through written and visual representations of dance in colonial discourse.
Prof. Scolieri will be recognized at an awards ceremony during the joint CORD-SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) 2014 Conference, taking place November 13-16 at the University of Iowa.
Learn more about Dancing the New World, and listen to an interview with Prof. Scolieri on his research.
Prof. Scolieri joined Barnard's faculty in 2000. His research interests include global dance studies, U.S. modern dance history, movement theory and analysis, and performance studies. He is currently writing a critical biography entitled Ted Shawn and the Invention of American Dance, under contract with Oxford University Press.