Anurima Banerji

Anurima Banerji is Associate Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her scholarship bridges academic and artistic worlds through her dual practice as an Odissi dancer and poet, with affiliations spanning UCLA's Center for India and South Asia, Center for Performance Studies, Center for the Study of Women, and LGBTQ Studies Program.

Her educational trajectory includes:

• BA in English Literature (Women's Studies minor), McGill University, 1996
• MA in Communications (Cultural Studies focus), McGill University, 1999
• MA in Performance Studies (Dance Studies focus), New York University, 2004
• PhD in Performance Studies (Dance History focus), New York University, 2010

Banerji's research centers on critical historicizations of Indian dance, particularly Odissi, examining intersections with state regulation, gender performance, and law through frameworks of postcolonialism, critical race theory, and queer studies. She investigates how embodied practices negotiate biopower, spatial politics, and cultural identity across South Asia and diasporic communities, introducing conceptual tools like 'paratopia' to analyze performances that subvert dominant norms.

Her publications reveal a consistent focus on dance as a site of political resistance, evolving from early work on Asian American identity formation to deep analyses of classical Indian dance's relationship with modernity and state power. Key thematic threads include gender performativity under legal frameworks, the body as a contested political territory, and decolonial approaches to dance historiography.

Major recognitions include:

• 2020 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Dancing Odissi: Paratopic Performances of Gender and State
• 2013 Gertrude Lippincott Award for 'Dance and the Distributed Body'
• 2007 Outstanding Graduate Research Award for 'Paratopias of Performance'

Her research has been sustained by competitive fellowships from the American Association of University Women, Hellman Foundation, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, and Freie Universität's International Research Center, with recent support from NYU's Center for Ballet and the Arts (2023). She coordinates the Odissi Dance Research Series with UNC Charlotte's Kaustavi Sarkar and serves on editorial boards for the Dance Studies Association and South Asian Dance Intersections.

Banerji actively collaborates across institutional boundaries, contributing to exhibitions like A Slightly Curving Place (HKW Berlin/Alserkal Dubai) and co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Indian Dance. At UCLA, she teaches foundational courses including Theories of Performance and World Dance Histories while mentoring interdisciplinary approaches to embodiment and knowledge production.