Assistant Professor Christopher-Rasheem McMillan of the Departments of Dance and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies, has been appointed a Fellow of the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University.

A choreographer and a scholar, McMillan holds an MFA degree in experimental choreography (Laban Conservatoire, London) and a PhD in theology and religious studies (King’s College, London). His Yale project will take two interdependent approaches: completion of a book titled Performance Criticism: Scripture, Sex, and the Sacred, and an evening-length performance called Sacred/ Scripture as choreology. Taken together, the components will create new knowledge, methods, and approaches not only for theorizing the cultural impact of the choreographic through theological discourse, but also for creating practical and impactful approaches to body-based art and meaning making.

McMillan, who received the CLAS Collegiate Teaching Award for 2019-20, works across multiple disciplines, including religious studies, queer studies, performance, choreography, and theology. He employs methods from the arts and humanities in his teaching and helps students transcend these boundaries. With research interests are in body theology, queer theory, choreographic practices, American religious culture, and practice-based research, his writing has been published in The Journal of Dance, Movement & Spiritualities, Kinebago, and Contact Quarterly. His performance works have been seen at venues such as the Bates Dance Festival of Bates College, Providence International Arts Festival (PVD), and The Dance Complex and Green Street Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in performance platforms such as the 2011 participatory event Beyond Text, London.

The Yale Institute of Sacred Music was founded in 1973. The ISM Fellows are scholars, religious leaders, and artists at all career stages whose work is in or is moving to the fields of sacred music, liturgical/ritual studies, or religion and the arts. Relocating to the Yale campus for one or two academic terms, they are integrated into Institute and university life through teaching and sharing their work.