Fellowship / Fellows

Kimerer LaMothe

  • 2000–2001
  • Humanities
  • Frieda L. Miller Fellow, Bunting Program
  • Harvard University

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

 

Religious studies scholar and dancer Kimerer LaMothe draws upon disciplines of philosophy, theology, dance, ritual and performance studies, and the comparative study of religion in pursuing questions regarding the relationship between religion and dance. She is the head tutor for the Comparative Study of Religion undergraduate concentration as well as a lecturer in the Modern West at Harvard University. Her recently completed manuscript, “A Disconcerting Miracle: Theorizing Religion and Dance” (forthcoming, 2001), offers theoretical resources for studying dance as religion based on close reading of texts by western philosophers of religion, most notably, the phenomenologist of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw.

During her fellowship year, LaMothe will complete a manuscript, “Dancing Religion: The Technique and Choreography of Martha Graham.” She will argue that the American modern dancer Martha Graham participated self-consciously in twentieth-century discourse concerning the nature of religion in an effort to make dances worthy of recognition as fine art. LaMothe will demonstrate how Graham’s dances enact a relationship between verbal language and moving bodies.

She received her PhD in theology in the modern West from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University.

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

01 / 09

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