Emily Hardick is a Ph.D. candidate in African history (with minor fields in colonial history and dance studies). She is interested in the transnational circulation of dance performance and the cultural politics of performing arts within colonial and authoritarian regimes. Her work addresses these themes in the context of colonial and postcolonial Congo (DRC), from the 1930s to the early 1990s. Her dissertation examines the international tours of Congolese performance troupes, their relationships to Belgian arts organizations, and their role in the performance of colonial subjecthood and postcolonial national identity. Emily’s research is supported by a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, the Belgian Fulbright IIE Student Program Research Award, and the Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship.