Chercheurs

Anthropologie / KONDO, DORINNE

kondo

Position

Professor (Anthropology and American Studies)
Director, Asian American Studies
Department of Anthropology
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Thèmes de recherche

Race, performance, theatre in the U.S., cultural politics, cultural theory, theories of the subject, transnationalism. Author of CRAFTING SELVES: POWER, GENDER, AND DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY IN A JAPANESE WORKPLACE (U. of Chicago, 1990 and winner of 2000 J.I. Staley Prize for a book that has had an impact on the field of Anthropology); ABOUT FACE: PERFORMING RACE IN FASHION AND THEATRE (Routledge 1997; winner of Association for Asian American Studies Cultural and Literary Studies Award). A playwright, Kondo is the author of (DIS)GRACEFUL(L) CONDUCT (winner of Mixed Blood Theaters We Dont Need No Stinking Dramas" comedy playwriting award); BUT CAN HE DANCE? (a multiracial relationship comedy); and SEAMLESS (a magical realist drama about the transmission of historical memory of the Japanese American internment; the play draws parallels to post-9/11 racial profiling). Kondo has done extensive dramaturgical work for playwright Anna Deavere Smiths TWILIGHT: LOS ANGELES 1992 (Mark Taper Forum) , for the film of TWILIGHT for PBS, and for workshops of Smiths HOUSE ARREST (Arena Stage, Mark Taper Forum).

Current projects include a scholarly book (RE)VISIONING RACE, which uses contemporary U.S, performance as a point of entry into current complications to conventional notions of race: cross-racial identification, multiraciality, and transnationalism. The book is textually innovative, written in the registers of theory, first-person narrative, and play. Other theatre-related projects include: 1) a collaboration with playwright Velina Hasu Houston on TRANSNATIONALISM, RACE, AND IDENTITY, in which both playwrights will publish a play and supply critical commentary for the other play; 2) editing a volume of Asian American plays from the Mark Taper Forums Asian Theatre Workshop, where Kondo is Scholar in Residence. She is currently engaged in dramaturgy for a musical featuring taiko drumming, with the working title TAIKOPROJECT.

Prix et récompenses

2002 University of California at Irvine, Humanities Research Institute, Residential Research Fellowship, on Transnationalism in Asian/ Asian American Theatre.
Zumberge Faculty Development Grant, USC, with Prof. Velina Hasu Houston, for staging the play Seamless.
2000-1 Getty Scholar, Getty Research Institute
2000 National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship
School of American Research Fellowship, awarded—not accepted
1999 J.I. Staley Prize, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM, given to book having an impact on the field of Anthropology, for Crafting Selves.
1998 Association for Asian American Studies Book Prize in Cultural Studies, for About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater, Routledge 1997
1993 Institute of American Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA; Fellow, University of California at Irvine Humanities Research Institute, Minority Discourse Initiative; Rockefeller Fellowship, University of California at Santa Cruz, The Center for Cultural Studies (awarded, not accepted)
1991 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, Society for Humanistic Anthropology, Honorable Mention, for Crafting Selves
1990 American Philosophical Society
Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asia Council Research Travel Grant
1989-90 Rockefeller Fellow, Center for Cultural Studies, Rice University
Rutgers University Center for Historical Studies (awarded, not accepted)
Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asia Council Research Grant
1987-88 The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Rockefeller Fellowship
1985 Milton Fund, Harvard University Medical School, Research Grant
1981 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Fellowship (write-up)
1980 Harvard University, Department of Anthropology, Research Grant
1979 Fulbright-Hays/Institute for International Education Dissertation Fellowship (renewal)
1978 Fulbright-Hays/ IIE Dissertation Fellowship
Social Science Research Council Dissertation Fellowship
1977 Department of Anthropology, Harvard University; summer research
1975-77 National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship
1974 Japan Foundation/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs travel grant

Publications

(Re)visions of Race: Performance and New Racial Formations, in progress.

Using contemporary U.S. performance as a point of departure, this book examines complications in conventional notions of race and racial formation: cross-racial identifications, multiraciality, multiracial collaboration and conflict, and transnationalism/ diaspora. Theoretical essays are interspersed with analyses of specific performers and performances, including African American playwright Anna Deavere Smith, the Chicano-Latino male trio Culture Clash, the work of David Henry Hwang, among others.

About Face: Performing "Race" in Fashion and Theatre, Routledge, 1997.
Winner, Association of Asian American Studies, Cultural and Literary Studies Book Award, 1998.

Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace, The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Winner, J.I. Staley Prize, 1999, School of American Research, for a book having an impact on the field of Anthropology.