“I was both surprised and thrilled that a dissertation in the humanities, with the words ‘dance,’ ‘music,’ and ‘Presbyterian’ in its title, was given full recognition as a rigorous scholarly work,” said Clara Henderson of her winning doctoral dissertation, Dance Discourse in the Music and Lives of Presbyterian Mvano Women in Southern Malawi.
It was awarded the University of Indiana’s highest prize for graduate research in April. The Ester L. Kinsley Ph.D. Dissertation Award, which considers work in all academic fields, includes a US$4,000 cash prize and is granted to two dissertations annually: one in the field of science and the other in the humanities.
Henderson spent almost 20 years in Malawi as a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. There she worked with the music department of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian’s Blantyre synod, which encompasses southern Malawi.
“During my tenure, I became particularly fascinated with the music and dance of the women’s guild or Mvano,” she told the Record in an email, noting that the guilds include more than 80,000 women in Blantyre synod alone. “I was interested in their use of dance to express their Christian faith, to advocate for change in the political structures of their church, to create a sanctuary for women, and to minister to their local communities.”
Henderson received a doctorate degree in folklore and ethnomusicology this year. She currently works as associate director for projects at the University of Indiana’s Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities.
