Moving Lessons is an insightful and sophisticated look at the origins and influence of dance in American universities, focusing on Margaret H’Doubler (1889–1982), who established the first university courses and the first degree program in dance. Janice Ross shows how H’Doubler changed the way Americans thought not just about female physicality but also about higher education for women. In this second edition, Ross adds new details on H’Doubler’s radical pedagogy―including her use of a skeleton as a teaching tool in the classroom―and reflections on recent developments in dance studies and education.
Janice L. Ross is professor of theater and performance studies at Stanford University. She is the author of Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia and Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance.