RSVP here for dinner with Professor Yessayan on Wednesday, May 21st at 6:30PM in the Center for Gender and Student Engagement (in the Choates)!

Maral Tatios Yessayan is an artist and a feminist performance ethnographer with research interests focusing on the body in issues related to dance, gender, Islam, sexuality, labor, and nation-branding in 21st century Jordan. Her book Performing Jordan: Gender and Labor on the Transnational Stage examines the politics of national dance and the emerging category of temporary dance workers who negotiate issues of gender, sexuality, and Islam while giving insight into how their dance and labor are linked to the creation of the ideal citizen, the management of Jordan’s global brand, and the promotion of the monarchy's local and international appeal. Yessayan holds a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California–Riverside. She is the recipient of the 2013 and 2014 GRID Fellowships at the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth, and the Mellon Dance Studies Fellowship at Brown University. Yessayan maintains an active national profile. She was a plenary speaker at the 2013 joint conference organized by The Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) and the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) with the theme: De-Centering Dance Studies: Moving Toward New Global Approaches. Her article “Dancing With Patriarchy: Jordanian Women on Stage and in Life” will be published in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies later this year.