
Rhythm Nation
West African Dance and the Politics of Diaspora
Jasmine E. Johnson(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 5. May 2026
Book
Hardback
176 pages
978-0-19-049604-3 (ISBN)
Description
At the intersection of diaspora theory, dance studies, performance studies, and critical ethnography, Rhythm Nation: West African Dance and the Politics of Diaspora explores the relationship between West African dance, race, gender, and sexuality in the United States and Guinea. In this book, Jasmine E. Johnson reveals the power of dance in shaping participants' individual and collective identities through the premise of African connectedness. By considering the relationship between movement, diaspora, and belonging, Johnson offers a study of multiple West African dance and drum contexts, including dance classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, dance and drum workshops in Guinea, and the North American Broadway stage.
Johnson explores the ways people with various lengths of experience with West African dance make use of movement to confer self, community, and diasporic membership. Revealing the ways practices of pleasure are enmeshed in the operations of power, intimacy, and difference, Rhythm Nation shows how dance links the symbolic and physical dimensions of diaspora: the imaginative work that fosters diasporic connectedness and the physical motion through and across space that has, and continues to, yield variegated African diasporic communities. Rhythm Nation asserts that West African dance both widens the circle of African diasporic "we" and interrogates its ever-shifting boundaries of belonging.
Johnson explores the ways people with various lengths of experience with West African dance make use of movement to confer self, community, and diasporic membership. Revealing the ways practices of pleasure are enmeshed in the operations of power, intimacy, and difference, Rhythm Nation shows how dance links the symbolic and physical dimensions of diaspora: the imaginative work that fosters diasporic connectedness and the physical motion through and across space that has, and continues to, yield variegated African diasporic communities. Rhythm Nation asserts that West African dance both widens the circle of African diasporic "we" and interrogates its ever-shifting boundaries of belonging.
Reviews / Votes
08/12/2025More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
422 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-049604-3 (9780190496043)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
approx. 07/2026
Oxford University Press Inc
€30.50
Not yet published
Person
Jasmine E. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Author
Assistant Professor of Africana StudiesAssistant Professor of Africana Studies, The University of Pennsylvania
Content
Introduction: Rhythmic Nations Chapter 1: Belonging and Diasporic Elsewheres Chapter 2: Fela!: Diaspora in Three Moves Chapter 3: Choreographing Return .: Conclusion: Spirograph