Christine Şahin is a dance practitioner-scholar and ethnographer specializing in contemporary Egyptian raqs sharqi (“belly dance”) and other MENAT (Middle Eastern, North African, and Turkish) dance genres. She is a Lecturer in Dance Studies with the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and earned her Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside. Her ethnographic research investigates local, intra-MENAT, and global circulations of raqs sharqi centered within Cairo, Egypt. In particular, she positions her research as a core site for analyzing the political, gender, and economic transformations the country has been experiencing in the aftermath of Egypt’s January 25th, 2011 revolution.

Şahin is currently busy with her book manuscript, Core Connections: Cairo Belly Dance in the Revolution’s Aftermath, a dance ethnography contracted with Oxford University Press. She has also been professionally performing and teaching raqs sharqi and other MENAT dances throughout the East and West coasts for over a decade, currently throughout the greater San Diego area.

Research and Teaching Interests:
Critical Dance Studies and Theory
Dance and Feminist Ethnography
Middle Eastern Gender, Sexuality, and Corporeality Studies
Choreographic Writing
Transnational and Cross-Cultural Pedagogy and Perspectives
MENAT, raqs sharqi, and geriatric dance and fitness