Joanna Dee Das

Joanna Dee Das received her PhD in History from Columbia University and is now an Associate Professor in the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). She is also an affiliate of WashU's History Department, African and African-American Studies Department, and American Culture Studies Program. She writes about dance, musical theater, variety entertainment, country music, and how those forms have played a role in social and political movements, including the long Black Freedom Struggle, decolonization, modern conservatism, and the Religious Right.

She is the author of KATHERINE DUNHAM: DANCE AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA (Oxford 2017), which won the 2018 de la Torre Bueno Best First Book Award from the Dance Studies Association and an honorable mention Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theatre and performance from the American Society for Theatre Research. Her current book, FAITH, FAMILY, AND FLAG: BRANSON ENTERTAINMENT AND THE IDEA OF AMERICA is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in November 2025.

She has also published articles in the Journal of Urban History, Dance Research Journal, Studies in Musical Theatre, Theatre History Studies, TDR, and ARTS, as well as authored or co-authored book chapters in The Futures of Dance Studies, The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical, Dance in Musical Theatre: A History of the Body in Movement, The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in America’s City of Second Chances, and A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical, among others.