Dr. Angeline Shaka, Visiting Assistant Professor

Angeline Shaka, Ph.D. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance for the 2012-2013 academic year, teaching a variety of practice and theory courses for Texas Woman’s University’s undergraduate dance majors as well as for its M.A. and M.F.A. students. Her dissertation and current interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on contemporary hula choreographic projects’ theorization of Native Hawaiian identities and representations in a global world. She is concerned in particular with the ways indigenous knowledge systems are being activated, through combinations of traditional and hybridized hula performance styles, as part of a collective of cultural and political decolonizing practices evident in Hawaii in the wake of the 1960s era’s Hawaiian cultural renaissance. Her research interests include theories of choreography and corporeality, the contemporary articulation of Native epistemologies, hybridized diasporic indigenous performance, and theories and representations of gender and sexuality. Angeline’s publications include a contribution to the Dance Heritage Coalition’s online exhibition, “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100,” and has a forthcoming piece in Journal of Folklore Research. She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, and a BA in Dance and Women’s Studies from Sarah Lawrence University.