Dr. Gearhart received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida in 1998. She takes an interdisciplinary approach (Visual Anthropology, History, and Performance Studies) to her research on non-western music and dance performance traditions. Her area of interest is East Africa, where she has frequently lived over the past twenty  years, primarily among the Swahili people of the Kenya coast. Recent publications: Taking American Race Relations on the Road...to Africa, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 8, Issue 2, Spring 2005. http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v8/v8i2a4.htm and Ngoma Memories: How Ritual Music and Dance Shaped the Northern Kenya Coast. African Studies Review. Volume 48, Number 3, December, 2005. Professor Gearhart is currently working on a book-length manuscript on Swahili expressive arts.

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