dancehall, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, post-colonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology, and gender studies.

"DanceHall" combines cultural geography, performance studies and cultural studies to examine performance culture across the Black Atlantic. Taking Jamaican dancehall music as its prime example, "DanceHall" reveals a complex web of cultural practices, politics, rituals, philosophies, and survival strategies that link Caribbean, African and African diasporic performance.

Combining the rhythms of reggae, digital sounds and rapid-fire DJ lyrics, dancehall music was popularized in Jamaica during the later part of the last century by artists such as Shabba Ranks, Shaggy, Beenie Man and Buju Banton. Even as its popularity grows around the world, a detailed understanding of dancehall performance space, lifestyle and meanings is missing. Author Sonjah Stanley Niaah relates how dancehall emerged from the marginalized youth culture of Kingston's ghettos and how it remains inextricably linked to the ghetto, giving its performance culture and spaces a distinct identity. She reveals how dancehall's migratory networks, embodied practice, institutional frameworks, and ritual practices link it to other musical styles, such as American blues, South African kwaito, and Latin American reggaeton. She shows that dancehall is part of a legacy that reaches from the dance shrubs of West Indian plantations and the early negro churches, to the taxi-dance halls of Chicago and the ballrooms of Manhattan. Indeed, "DanceHall" stretches across the whole of the Black Atlantic's geography and history to produce its detailed portrait of dancehall in its local, regional, and transnational performance spaces.

Since its emergence in the mid-1970s, Reggae has had a truly global impact around issues of freedom, unity and human rights. Using reggae festivals as the main site of inquiry, Reggae Pilgrimages accounts for the expansion of the reggae musical landscape through global festivals on all continents with a community of pilgrims united around sound. Looking at the proliferation of festivals - large concert events featuring reggae music - from the US to the UK, reaching to Europe, Asia and Australia and across the Middle East and throughout Africa, it will document, exhibit, publicize and archive the significant impact of reggae and key icons. It will address the process by which reggae and the identity of its community are changed, altered and interpreted as they traverse the globe and explore the political significance of these festival spaces for the complex worldwide network of reggae pilgrims.