The Performance of Ethnicity and the Development of a Double Consciousness: Chinese Dance in the American South Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, long-running American legacies of anti-Chinese sentiment and rose to the social fore again in new ways. In March 2021, Atlanta was rocked by a deadly mass shotting which targeted Asian women. Within this social context, this dissertation documents and theorizes the psychological and social processes of personal identification with and the public performance of Chineseness. Based on ethnographic research with practitioners of Chinese Dance in the contemporary American South, this dissertation sketches a multifaceted concept of Chineseness as an identity which encompasses and extends beyond conventional conceptualizations of nationality, ethnicity, and race. Bringing together discourses within psychological anthropology, Asian American Studies, and the anthropology of race and ethnicity, this project explores how diverse practitioners of one ostensibly nationalistic, multiethnic, and racialized art form come to understand themselves and their place in the multicultural American communities in which they live.

This dissertation consists of three Parts. Part I analyzes dancers’ quotidian and artistic movement as forces which establish Chineseness and its meaning in the American South. In everyday life, Chinese Dance practitioners move around their cities, showing up in different places and instantiating temporary Chinese social spaces which I term ephemeral communities. Artistic movements and fusion choreography are also analyzed as texts in which dancers present intellectual arguments about the rightful place of Chineseness in the southern/American social order. Part Two theorizes Chineseness as an ethnic identity with which dancers from a variety of backgrounds desire to connect. Analyzing groups of dancers from specific backgrounds, ethnic Chineseness is conceptualized as being similar to personal property in that it can be held, preserved, nurtured, lost, and gained. Part III frames Chinese Dance as a practice of several simultaneous exercises in empathy and empathy-like attunements. This multidimensional empathetic practice, I argue, constitutes a social technology capable of helping extremely diverse groups bridge social divides, openly address difference, and do the hard work of building stable senses of identity and community solidarity at the same time.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………… 6

A Note on the Transcriptions of Direct Quotes………………………………………………...... 9

List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………... 10

Chapter  

1.     Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..…. 13

Interlude One………………………………………………………………………….………....49

PART I: Racializing Choreography:

How Chinese Dance Practitioners Move and Shape the Racial Imaginary………………. 55

2.     The Black/White Binary: An Enduring Racial Landscape…………………………….. 59

3.     Quotidian Movement and Everyday Racialization…………………………………….. 71

4.     Fusion: Aesthetic Influences in Original Choreography and Adaptation…………….… 90

Interlude Two…………………………………………………………………………..……… 105

PART II: Contours of Chineseness:

Ethnic Identity as Lineage, Balance, Assertion, Habit, and Refuge……………..……….. 109

5.     Chineseness as Lineage: First-Generation/Immigrant Perspectives……………...…… 118

6.     Chineseness as Reservation and Defiance: Second-Generation Chinese American Perspectives……………………………………………………………………………. 131

7.     Chineseness as Assertion: Mixed Heritage Perspectives………………………....…… 141

8.     Chineseness as Habit: Transracial Adoptee Perspectives……………………..…,….... 148

9.     Chineseness as Refuge and Connection: Ethnically Non-Chinese Perspectives……..161

Interlude Three……………………………………………………………………………….. 173

PART III: Studio as Empathy Lab: Chinese Dance as a Practice of Multiple Empathies and Dancers’ Theorization of Safe and Dangerous Empathy……………………………….… 177

10.  Empathy Between Dancers: Proximity, Synchrony, and Semi-Choreographed   Interaction…………………………………………………………………………….. 185

11. Empathy from Dancers to the Characters they Play: Einfühlung, Projection, and Impersonation………………………………………………………………..……….. 195

12. Empathy between Dancers and Spectators: Representation, Objectification, and Kinesthetic Empathy………………………………………………………………….. 216

13. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………..………. 225

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………229

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Anthropology
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Anthropology, Cultural Psychology, Social Asian American Studies
Keyword	Ethnic Identity Chinese Dance Psychological Anthropology American South Race Chineseness
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bruce Knauft, Emory University
Committee Members	Bayo Holsey, Emory University Emily Wilcox, William & Mary Robert Paul, Emory University Chris Suh, Emory University

Last modified

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	File download under embargo until 27 November 2026	2026-04-24 18:16:35 -0400	File download under embargo until 27 November 2026

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions