Ameera Nimjee

Ameera Nimjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Yale University, with affiliations in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, and membership on the South Asian Studies Council. Her research focuses on bodies, movement, and transnational politics in South Asian performance cultures, including contemporary dance economies and migration-linked performance traditions among Muslims across South Asia, East Africa, and North America.

Education:

• PhD in Ethnomusicology, University of Chicago
• MA in Ethnomusicology, University of Toronto
• BMus, University of Toronto

Research Interests explore:

• Kathak dance and Bollywood fitness
• South Asian American weddings as performance spaces
• Racialized and gendered labor in performance

Funding & Awards include support from the American Council of Learned Societies, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her work appears in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

Performance Career: Active kathak dancer with Toronto’s Chhandam Dance Company under Joanna de Souza, and former Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at University of Puget Sound.