The familiar and the foreign: Dance on the historically black college campus

The purpose of this dissertation is to illuminate the missing voices of historically black college and university dance programs in the national discussion on the history and development of dance in American higher education. The methodology included the selection of five subject schools that are historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) with dance programs in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The schools include public and private institutions, large and small, and those with and without dance degree programs. Extant resources were reviewed, including school websites, library holdings, curricula, archival data, and social media resources with the data sorted, coded, and interpreted in two data chapters. Analyzation of the data shows that the body of knowledge through which future dance scholars are trained and educated needs to be richly varied, diverse, and inclusive of multiple voices. This multiplicity results not only in greater accuracy of data in historical accounts, but also in greater understanding of both self and other for all students.