Monsters, Ghosts, and Demons
American Traditional Music and Dance Communities
Folk Aesthetics and Social Movements
Liv Jacobs has an M.A. in Performance Studies. They primarily write ethnographic memoir and creative nonfiction. Their most recent work centers Contra Dancing through lenses of cultural memory, temporality, and regional studies. Their M.A. thesis, “Contra(ry) Narratives: Dance History as Embodied Knowledge and Archived Practice,” examined the genesis stories of Contra Dance communities in New England and the Southern Appalachian Borderlands.
Liv is also interested in 19th century novels as ethnographic texts. Their most recent lines of inquiry are focused on affect and aesthetic theory and prefiguration. Their current work examines how collectives use aesthetics to render their political values legible. They are invested in the politics of folk and traditional music and dance, participatory performance communities, and the body as a site of heritage/tradition.