Through our scientific and technological genius, we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood.
Background
Melissa Blanco Borelli is a writer, dancer, and cultural critic. Blanco Borelli holds a BA in music and international relations from Brown University, an MA in communications management from University of Southern California, and a PhD in dance history and theory from University of California, Riverside.
Interests
Blanco Borelli’s research interests include feminist historiography and performance ethnography, popular dance on screen, Latina/o performance, e-learning and pedagogy in the arts, and theories of corporeality and affect in relationship to neoliberal capitalism. Her scholarship endeavors to demonstrate how dance and theories of the body provide new methodologies for inquiries into such perennial issues of identity as nation, gender, and racialization.
As a MLK visiting scholar, Blanco Borelli was hosted by MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Department, where she lectured and performed. She stayed at the Institute for another year under Dance@MIT’s Visiting Artists Program.
Sample Work
Book Review
Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image
Borelli, Melissa Blanco. “Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image.” (2008): 466-470.
Publication
“¿Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?”: Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954)
Blanco Borelli, Melissa. ““¿ Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?”: Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954).” Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 18, no. 3 (2008): 215-233.