Andrew Dell’Antonio is Distinguished Teaching Professor in, and Head of, the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division of the Butler School of Music in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
He has recently turned his focus to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and related approaches to anti-racism, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity / inclusion in higher education music. His commitment to UDL comes partly from his personal experience of neurodivergence.
“First the pandemic and then our educational institutions’ attempts to ‘return to normal’ have made all the more evident the structural inequities in access to academic opportunities for historically excluded folks. As we dedicate ourselves to ensuring that all students can feel like they belong and therefore can succeed, it’s also essential to build communities of support and care among those who support students’ paths, since we have also been stretched in multiple ways by precarity and administrative retrenchment as well as multiple aspects of global insecurity, and we can best sustain an inclusive academy through intersectional solidarity. I’m grateful to be part of this essential conversations and actions in these directions through the Care in the Academy initiative.”
“Our students are the future of creativity. They deserve to be treated seriously as cultural influencers, and because of this, they deserve to wrestle with the complexities of our past, the nuances of our present, and our collective responsibility toward creating a more just and inclusive future.”
Erica “EG” Gionfriddo is a dance artist, educator and somatic researcher who believes in the intelligent body each of us occupies. They are co-founder of ARCOS Dance (arcosdance.com), whose ongoing inquiry probes the intersection of technology and humanity through rigorous interdisciplinary experimentation. Gionfriddo directs ARCOS’ professional development and training programming, which supports independent artists through multiple creative and fiscal platforms. Gionfriddo’s extensive experience with the GYROTONIC® method guides their pedagogy, which they bring in their capacity as an assistant professor of practice in the dance area at The University of Texas at Austin and as a national teaching artist.
“My pedagogy is rooted in a body-based practice of unlearning. I infuse my classes with the steady work of naming and reframing thought patterns based in rigid paradigms that perpetuate white supremacist ideals like perfectionism, hustle culture, power hierarchies, binary thinking, individualism, and silencing. In particular, I confront the false narrative that there is a “normative” body. The dance world is just beginning its disentanglement from historically abusive patterns of racism, misogyny, classism, and the erasure of artists of Color and their cultures. These long permitted toxic and destructive behaviors in our dance training and performance practices are passed down to us, often unintentionally and disguised as “discipline.” In my classes, we persist in identifying our own internalized idea of the “normative” body as it influences how we perceive and react to race, gender, wealth, thinness, and what we even consider to be “dance.” These are the objectives of my “hidden curriculum” in every course and I constantly experiment with how my course policies and materials like the syllabus create the conditions for students to actively practice this unlearning.”