In Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages (University of Chicago, May 2018), Seeta Chaganti, associate professor of English, explores  the complex relationship between medieval dance and medieval poetry, arguing that the intersection of texts and dance produced an experience of poetic form based in disorientation, asymmetry, and even misstep. Chaganti argues that to medieval audiences, poetic form was a multimedia experience shaped by encounters with dance. In this work, she proposes a new method of reenacting medieval dance that draws upon experiences of watching contemporary dance.

Seeta Chaganti joined the faculty of the UC Davis English department in 2001. She specializes in Old and Middle English poetry and its intersections with material culture. Her first book was The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Her current project, tentatively entitled "Carceral Angels: An Abolitionist History of the Sheriff," traces a long history of the shrieval office from pre-Conquest England to modern America. It argues that the earliest days of English law forged the triangulation of violence, whiteness, and property that obstructs liberation in Anglophone modernity.  

Chaganti has served as a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society and a Councillor of the Medieval Academy of America. She is currently an Executive Board Member of Race before Race and a member of Medievalists of Color.

View the book at University of Chicago Press