Dance, discipline, and the liberal self at a Ugandan Catholic boarding school

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Periodical article

Title:	Dance, discipline, and the liberal self at a Ugandan Catholic boarding school
Author:	Pier, David G.
Year:	2016
Periodical:	African Studies Review (ISSN 1555-2462)
Volume:	59
Issue:	3
Pages:	33-59
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	schools curriculum dance modernization
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.86
Abstract:	In the last years of Idi Amin's reign, modern dance was introduced at Namasagali College, a Catholic boarding school in rural Uganda, as a means of encouraging modern, liberal self-awareness in students. Drawing on interviews with Namasagali's former headmaster, teachers, and students, this article offers a scholarly consideration of this school, and contextualizes its modern dance curriculum within Africa's historical modernity/modernization problematic. The school's progressive educational program, with its focus on creative exploration and ownership of the body, was framed within a neocolonial regimen of discipline and punishment that aimed to drill modern behavior into students. In its clashing modes of government, this school exhibited contradictions that have perennially troubled Western liberal intervention in Africa. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]