The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of
Emotions, Europe 1100-1800 presents
EARLY MODERN DEPICTIONS OF DANCING
OTHERS AND WHAT WE CAN INFER OF THEIR
VIEWERS’ EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
PUBLIC LECTURE
SPEAKER: Alessandro Arcangeli
(The University of Verona)
DATE: Monday 10 October 2016
TIME: 6.15 - 7.45pm
VENUE: Lecture Theatre C, Old Arts Building,
The University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3010
COST: Free
REGISTRATION: https://secure.alumni.unimelb.
edu.au/s/1182/match/wide.aspx?sid=1182&gid=1
&pgid=9868&cid=14213
ENQUIRIES: [email protected]
Image: Albrecht Dürer, Peasant Couple Dancing, 1514.
© Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In a forthcoming article and book project ‘The savage, the peasant and the
witch’, Alessandro Arcangeli takes these three figures as examples of
meaningful ‘dancing others’ in the European tradition. He analyses the
extent and way in which dance has been a contributing component of
cultural stereotypes ‒ in particular hetero-stereotypes, depicting (by
words and images) a variety of ‘others’ as significantly characterised by
dancing. Dancing can project judgmentally charged connotations on the
represented groups and on dance itself as their specific attribute. The
emotional aspect is a significant part of the story, for such images
contribute to the definition of cultural identities. Dancing is able to give
bodily and visible expression to felt emotions and thereby assists
perceptions of inclusion in ‒ and exclusion from ‒ complex and multiple
communities, through feelings of attraction and repulsion, as well as a
mix of aesthetic judgments concerning the value and function of dancing
habits and performances.
ALESSANDRO ARCANGELI is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the
University of Verona and the current Chair of the International Society for Cultural
History (http://www.culthist.org). He is the author of Cultural History: A Concise
Introduction (Routledge, 2012) and has published widely on dance (Davide o
Salomè? Il dibattito europeo sulla danza nella prima età moderna [FBSR-Viella,
2000]) and leisure (Recreation in the Renaissance: Attitudes towards Leisure and
Pastimes in European Culture, 1425‒1675 [Palgrave Macmillan, 2003]). In a
forthcoming article in the Rivista Storica Italiana he discusses how cultural history
and the history of emotions have been mutually redefining each other over the past
generation, to such an extent that the one has become inseparable from the other.