�� faculty member accepts prestigious NYU ballet fellowship

Kristin Boyce (Photo by Megan Bean)

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A faculty fellow in Mississippi State’s Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College and assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion is the recipient of a fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.

Kristin E. Boyce is among 20 distinguished individuals chosen for the NYU fellowship residency beginning in January 2020. Now in its sixth year, the CBA is an international institute bringing together choreographers, composers, dancers and scholars from across the globe to share expertise and experiences beyond their core disciplines while completing self-directed research projects related to the art of dance.

The fellowship is designed to develop projects that expand the way ballet is perceived, practiced and performed. While at the CBA, Boyce plans to work on her current book project, “Diotima at the Ballet: Reinventing Modernism in Philosophy, Theater and Dance.”

“There are so many aspects of this fellowship that are exciting, including the time to work on the manuscript without interruption for four months, and the chance to see more dance and use the incredible resources of the [New York Public Library Dance Archive] for more than a day or two at a time,” Boyce said. “I will be watching as much dance and theater as I possibly can, and taking ballet classes.”

Boyce developed an interest in ballet through her experiences as an adult student of dance and is an “enthusiastic audience member.”

“Probably the most important aspect of the fellowship is the opportunity it creates for me to work with and alongside such incredible scholars and artists whose knowledge of and context for approaching ballet as an art form is so different from mine,” she said.

Christopher A. Snyder, dean of the Shackouls Honors College and professor of history, said Boyce integrates her research and teaching with enthusiasm and care for student learning.

“As a philosopher of aesthetics, Dr. Boyce brings a perspective that reminds us of the power of art in its myriad forms, and has shown her colleagues new ways of understanding and appreciating meaning through dance,” Snyder said.

An �� faculty member since 2014, Boyce teaches logic and aesthetics in the philosophy and religion department. For the honors college, she teaches quest sequence and humanities seminars.

Boyce received a doctorate in philosophy from The University of Chicago in 2010. She is the recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellowship, a postdoctoral fellowship from Stanford University and a Josephine de Karman Dissertation Fellowship. Her primary research interests are in philosophy of art, history of early analytic philosophy, and in Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. She is the 2018 �� Humanities Teacher of the Year.

The CBA is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and NYU, with additional support from The Charles H. Revson Foundation, Fishman Family Fund, an advised fund of the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Merce Cunningham Trust, Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

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