Video-Interview with IRC-Fellow Catherine M. Cole

Video Interview with Catherine Cole, Freie Universität Berlin 2017

Produced by Milos Kosic
International Research Center
Copyright: Freie Universität Berlin, 2017
Interview led by Astrid Schenka

In this video-interview, IRC-Fellow Catherine Cole, Professor of Drama and Dean of the Arts at the University of Washington, talks about her work and in what way her personal background has been interwoven with the course of her studies and research. Cole has been focusing her research first on Ghana and later on South Africa. In this interview, she stresses to what extent the many similarities to the USA concerning aspects of segregation can be brought to light through a performance studies approach. Introducing her current research project on “Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice,” Cole explains her interest in contemporary choreographers from post-apartheid South Africa, that are trying to unravel histories and injustice through their artistic work. She underlines how many political implications a research on embodied knowledge is carrying in this context.