Anna Jayne Kimmel

Bio

Anna Jayne Kimmel is a performance studies scholar invested in the intersection of legal humanities and dance studies, with particular attention to race/coloniality and bodily scrutiny as grounded through francophone histories. This focus extends across historical and contemporary themes of policing, capture, and detainment and motivates scholarship in First Amendment rights, broadly reimagined.

Her recent books, Legal Moves: Choreographies of Race, Law and Empire (Stanford University Press) and Performing Law (co-edited with Peter Goodrich and Bernadette Meyler, Cambridge University Press, 2026), exemplify the performative, kinesthetic, and fleshly undercurrents of law. Her second monograph project extends this epistemological shift toward legal figurations of bodily autonomy across deathscapes and the right to die.

Additional scholarship appears in Dance Research Journal, Performance Research, Lateral, The Drama Review (TDR), and The Brooklyn Rail, as well as various edited volumes. She serves on the board of Performance Studies international and is an Associate Editor for Performance Research. Kimmel holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Stanford University and an A.B. from Princeton University.

As a dancer, she has performed the works of Ohad Naharin, Trisha Brown, John Jasperse, Francesca Harper, Olivier Tarpaga, and Susan Marshall, amongst others. In addition, Kimmel pursues community-engaged research in carceral studies, fostering collaboration with artists in confinement and serving as a restorative justice facilitator for alternative accountability programs in the DMV area.

In 2025, she was the inaugural scholar-in-residence at UCLA's Centre for Performance Studies. 

Publications

• Books
  • Legal Moves: Choreographies of Race, Law, and Empire (2026). Stanford University Press.
  • Performing Law (2026), Co-edited w/ Peter Goodrich and Bernadette Meyler. Law in Context Series, Cambridge University Press.
• Refereed Journal Articles
  • "Accounting for: Alternative Gestures of Sincerity in Legal Circles." Theatre Journal, forthcoming.
  • "The Right to Stillness: Tracing Corporeal Ambiguity in Legal Interpretation." Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal. Summer 2026
  • “Crowded Choreographies: From Assembly to Association and Back Again.” Dance Research Journal. “Assembly, Gathering, Being.” Vol. 55, No. 2, 2023
  • “A Moving Moment: A Critical Return to Choreographic Empathy.” Performance Research. “On Repair.” Vol. 26, No. 6, 2022
  • “Metered Togetherness: Affective Drifts and Temporal Proximities.” The Drama Review (TDR), “On Presence.” Vol. 66, No. 4 T156. Co-authored w/ Diana Damian Martin and Asher Warren, 2022
  • “On Remembering Le premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger 1969: An Assembled Interview.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Vol. 10, No. 1, 2021
  • “Diffracted Readings of the Future: Doing and Being through Practices of Differentiation.” Performance Research ‘On Diffraction,’ Vol. 25, No. 5. Co-authored w/ Natalia Esling, Azadeh Sharifi, and Asher Warren, 2020
• Refereed Book Chapters
  • “'Naked Athena' and Classical Lines: Wayward Aesthetics of the Civil Body." Performing Law, ed. Peter Goodrich, Anna Jayne Kimmel, and Bernadette Meyler Cambridge University Press, 2026
  • "Introduction: Law, Theatre, Performance." Performing Law, ed. Peter Goodrich, Anna Jayne Kimmel, and Bernadette Meyler. Cambridge University Press, 2026
  • “Of the Spaces Between: Prepositional Events throughout the Festival de Marseille.” Embodying Peripheries. Global Urban Humanities. University of California Press; Firenze University Press, 2022
  • “Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet.” The Oxford Handbook of Ballet Pedagogy. ed. Adesola Akinleye and Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming
• Public Scholarship and Commissioned Works
  • “Examining Diversity and Inclusion in the World of Dance.” Disrupted, an NPR/Connecticut Public Radio Podcast, featured guest, 2023
  • “Performing Colonial Toxicity.” if I can’t dance—I don’t want to be a part of your revolution. Samia Henni, w/ support from Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. Select translations, 2023
  • “Reflections on Norming in the Neoliberal Global University: A Conversation with Rey Chow.” Arcade: Literature, Humanities, and the World. Interview w/ Rey Chow, by Kimmel and Victoria Zurita, 2022
  • “Sorry/Please/No: A Dance for Survivors, Citizens, and Queens.” The Brooklyn Rail. June, 2022
  • “A Love Letter to Zineb Sedira.” in Unruly Archives for Crossings: Itineraries of Encounter. Curated by Amin Alsaden. Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto; commissioned, 2022
• Editorial Work
  • Ongoing “Arts + Justice: A Colloquy.” Arcade: Literature, Humanities, and the World

Classes

At George Washington University

• Trends in Performance Art
• Understanding Dance: Introduction to Dance Studies
• Law, Culture, and Performance
• Dance Composition II
• Int./Adv. Modern Dance Technique
• Senior Honors Thesis, Independent Studies and Internship Credit

Other University Settings

• Performing Justice or Just Performance?
• Dancing Theories of Race Studies
• Intersectionality and the Politics of Ballet
• Dance Histories
• Directed Reading: Edward Said, Culture, and Empire

Education

• Ph.D., Stanford University
• A.B., Princeton University

Expertise

• Performance and Dance Studies
• Law and Humanities
• Critical Carceral Studies
• Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
• Francophone and Maghrebi socio-cultural histories
• Critical Theory
• Community Engaged Research and Scholarship

Service Engagement

• Associate Editor, Performance Research
• Board Member, Performance Studies international
• Restorative Justice Facilitator, Northern Virginia Mediation Services