University of Lethbridge

About Me

I became a professor in Theatre Arts at the University of Lethbridge in 1989, after having a professional career as independent dance/theatre artist in Canada and Italy. My artistic practice now centres on community-engaged arts work; with projects involving people living with developmental disabilities, immigrants and refugees, nursing and counseling training, and global health promotion, primarily in Malawi. My academic research work is interdisciplinary focusing on community-engaged arts practice and teaching and learning. Previous work investigated Canadian multiculturalism and dance, and indigenous dance, using a cultural studies lens to examine dance across cultures and colonial and imperial histories. My publications reflect a range of interests, with works connecting policy-making with embodied practices like dance to investigate ideas about citizenship, equity and cultural pluralism; dancing in rural Canada as historical data; and the problematics of activist dance and theatre performance creation and community-university partnerships. I am the University of Lethbridge Board of Governor's Teaching Chair for 2015-17.

Biography

Lisa Doolittle is Professor in Theatre Arts at the University of Lethbridge, and Board of Governor's Teaching Chair 2015-2017.
Her research focuses on teaching and learning dance and theatre for social change, Canadian multiculturalism, and First Nations performances. She has presented and published internationally on community-engaged theatre and dance, and on indigenous, folk and social dance.

Currently co-investigator on Art for Social Change (ASC!) a 2.5 million dollar, five-year nation-wide partnership funded by SSHRC, she is researching best practices in teaching and learning about Arts for Social Change. She has led participatory theatre projects on health, management and cultural diversity in Lethbridge, in London UK and in Malawi. Recent performance work has engaged with employment issues facing people living with developmental disabilities, health promotion in rural Malawi schools, with local immigrant and refugee communities, and with global food issues.

Lisa teaches topics in community engaged or activist performance theory and practice, dance (technique, improvisation, choreography), movement for theatre (actor training, somatics), performance creation (physical theatre, verbatim and reminiscence theatre).

Selected Publications

2017 Doolittle, L. (director) Becoming Unlimited. Documentary Film. In March 2015, twenty-two university students, eight with identified disabilities, undertook a year-long inclusive dance journey with a dance professor and professional integrated dance director. Together they created Unlimited, an integrated dance theatre production. Documenting the whole creative process from intense rehearsals to tearful goodbyes, Becoming Unlimited explores how artistic process can lead to dynamic change for the inclusion of people with disabilities on and off the stage. (Documentary: 36 minutes)

2017 Doolittle, L. and A. Flynn. "Blackfoot on Parade: Policy and the Spectacle of Identity." in Bowditch, R. and P. Vissicaro eds. Festive Performance: Staging Identity, Politics, and Utopia in the Americas, an anthology published in the Enactments Series by Seagull Books distributed by University of Chicago Press.

2015 Doolittle, L. and A. Flynn. "Colonial Theatrics in Canada: Managing Blackfoot Dance During Western Expansionism." In George-Graves, Nadine, ed. Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater. New York: Oxford University Press.

2015 Doolittle, L. and J. Harrowing. "Performing Complex Social Change." in Mills, J. ed. Complex Social Change. Lethbridge: University of Lethbridge Art Gallery.

2013 Doolittle, L. "Re-imagining the multicultural citizen: "Folk" as strategy in the Japanese Canadians' 1977 Centennial National Odori Concert." Discourses in Dance. 5:2.

2013 Doolittle, L., Penny Farfan, Anne Flynn, MJ Thompson. ""Folk" as Keyword: Perspectives from Dance." Discourses in Dance. 5:2.

2012 Harrowing J.N., Gregory D.M., O'Sullivan P.S., Lee B. & Doolittle L. A critical analysis of undergraduate students' cultural immersion experiences. International Nursing Review 59, 494-501.

2011 Doolittle, L. and Anne Flynn. "Epilogue" in Dena Davida ed. Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance. Wilfred Laurier Press.

2010 Doolittle, L. and Lauren Jerke. "Talking global, performing local: Something to Declare" in Julie Salverson ed. Popular Political Theatre and Performance. Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press.

2010 Gregory, D., Harrowing, J.N., Lee, B., Doolittle, L., & O'Sullivan, P.S. Pedagogy as influencing nursing students' essentialized understanding of culture. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 7(1). doi: 10.2202/1548-923X.2025

2008 Doolittle, L. "Trianon and On: Reading Mass Social Dancing in Alberta Canada in the 1930s and 1940s." in Julie Malnig ed. Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader. University of Illinois Press.

2004 Doolittle, L. and A. Flynn. "Not Like a Document, Like a Dance: Human Rights and Embodiment." In N. Jackson editor. Right to Dance: Dance and Human Rights. Banff: Banff Centre Press.

2003 Doolittle, L. Dancing Bodies. Two 30 minute Educational Television Documentaries:
Living Histories and Dancing for Dollars. Funded by the Curriculum Redevelopment Fund, ACCESS Television and Alberta Learning, Government of Alberta. Awarded Best Educational Program by the Alberta Motion Picture Industry in 2003, this documentary makes interdisciplinary research perspectives and methodologies contained in recent scholarly publications accessible to undergraduate and high school dance students. It was publicly broadcast, and distributed to secondary and post-secondary educational institutions, and was a 'best seller' for Insight Media, a major arts film distribution firm. Funded by the Curriculum Redevelopment Fund, Government of the Province of Alberta.

2000 Doolittle, L and A. Flynn, editors. Dancing Bodies, Living Histories: New Writings on Dance and Culture. Banff: Banff Centre Press. (277p) This book marked a first for dance publishing in Canada, because of its focus not on biographical histories of professional dance companies that is more typical of dance publishing in Canada, but rather on theorizing the relationship between dance practices and broad social and historical processes.

Selected Creative Works

2015 Unlimited
Doolittle, L. and Pamela Boyd, choreography/direction. D. Barrus, costume design. J. McDowell, set design. B. Hansen, piano. J. Hellawell, sound and light design.
A mixed-abilities dance-theatre creation. March 17-21, University Theatre.

2011 Moveable Feast.
Doolittle, L. writer/director. R. Schultz, costume design. K. Smith, Set design. M. Takats, Lighting design.
An original performance creation about food and social justice, for young audiences. Nov. 22-26, 2011. David Spinks Theatre

2010 Hair: the American Love Rock Musical. (Rado and Ragni)
Doolittle, L. choreographer. G. Hanrahan Director, B. Hansen Musical Director. University Theatre, Feb. 9-13.

2007 Something to Declare.
Doolittle. L. writer/director. Lauren Jerke co-writer. Lily Visser, Set and costume design. Simon Reeve, Lighting design.
A performance creation based on true stories of eighteen immigrants to Lethbridge. University of Lethbridge Theatre, November 20-24.


2002 Iitaokanao'pi: The Meeting Place
Doolittle, L., choreographer, with I. Crutchley, composer, and O. Tailfeathers music collaborator. Staging of Blackfoot Napi legends for Grades 4-6. University of Lethbridge Theatre. Sponsored by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, President's Office, Faculties of Management, Fine Arts, Arts and Science, Education, Health Sciences, Lethbridge Symphony Association, Lethbridge Community Foundation.

2001 Trianon and On Choreographer.
A physical theatre piece about dancing during the 1930s and 40s in Alberta, based on interviews and dance sessions with local seniors. Dancers' Studiowest Alberta Choreographer's Festival, Calgary, and University of Lethbridge Theatre
Dance Project Co-artistic director.
Works by invited choreographers. University of Lethbridge Theatre, Dept. of Theatre Arts production.

Research Interests

Arts for Social Change, Community-engaged Theatre, Intercultural and Multicultural performance, Canadian Multiculturalism and Dance, Indigenous Dance, Physical Theatre, Performance Creation.

Current Research and Creative Activity

Title	Location	Grant Information	Principal Investigator	Co Researchers
Art for Social Change: An Integrated Research Partnership in Evaluation, Teaching/Learning, and Partnership Capacity Building	Lethbridge, AB	SSHRC, 2.5 Million, 5 Years.	Doolittle	ASC!
Assimilating Bodies: Regulation and Resistance in Canada?s Choreography of Nationhood.		Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 2004-08. Wonderful Canada: The Momiji Dancers and the National Odori Project. University of Lethbridge Research Fund.	Lisa Doolittle, University of Lethbridge
Assimilating Bodies: Regulation and Resistance in Canada’s Choreography of Nationhood.			Lisa Doolittle, University of Lethbridge
Now Showing Live Arts Series	Lethbridge, AB	Department of Canadian Heritage, Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
"Something to Declare" Oral history and community liaison towards an intercultural theatrical production about and by local immigrants		Lethbridge Family Services, Immigrant Services. Department of Theatre Arts, University of Lethbridge.

Previous Research

Title	Grant Agency	Completion Date
Now Showing Live Arts Series	Canadian Heritage, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts	1996-2007
Dancing Bodies two part Television Documentary	Curriculum Redevelopment Fund, Alberta Learning Government of Alberta, ACCESS Television	2003

Curriculum Vitae

CV for Lisa Doolittle

Internet Links

The University of Lethbridge
http://www.uleth.ca/unews/photo-gallery/window-world#.U1f3BsfMsYg
http://art-for-social-change.ca/
http://www.complexsocialchange.ca/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqIePL1Vvcw