Deborah Foster

Deborah Foster, retired Harvard Senior Lecturer on Theater, Dance & Media, received her Ph.D. in African Languages and Literature with a minor in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests extend and expand upon her initial field research in Kenya on Swahili oral narrative performance, as well as focus on contemporary dance performance, choreographic innovation, and gesture and movement as ethnographic research tools.  Before coming to Harvard in 1988, she taught in the Department of Folklore at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, and in the Dance Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.   At Harvard, she served for many years as the Head Tutor of and Senior Lecturer on Folklore and Mythology, as well as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Special Concentrations, where for decades students designed their own independent concentrations in the dramatic arts before the advent of Harvard’s Theater, Dance & Media concentration.