Women Performers as Agents of Change: Perspectives from India, March 15-16 2010

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A workshop to explore the work of scholars and activists who have a common interest in women performers and their unique place in Indian Society in order to create a conversation concerned with exploring, problematizing and strengthening female agency through performance.

Written Contributions

Selected participants have been invited to submit relevant writings (published or unpublished) from their research for all participants to read ahead of time in order to facilitate discussion.

University of Alberta

Christina Gier

  • Music, Music and Gender, feminist theory
    • Elsie Janis and Performance
"Lived Body vs Gender" and "Throwing Like a Girl" from Iris Marion Young's On Female Bodily Experience (2005).

Regula Qureshi

  • Director Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology
    • To Sing or not to Sing: Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints
"Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints"
"In Search of Begum Akhtar: Patriarchy, Poetry, and Twentieth-Century Indian Music"

Charn Jagpal

  • English and Film Studies, University of Alberta
    • “I Mean to Win”: The Rebellious Nautch Girl as Agent of Change in Flora Annie Steel’s The Potter’s Thumb (1894)
"'Going Nautch Girl' in the Fin de Siecle: The White Woman Burdened by Colonial Domesticity"

Canada

Beverly Diamond

  • CRC Ethnomusicology, Memorial University (Video Link)
    • Gender Dynamism and Displacement

Davesh Soneji

  • South Asian Religions, McGill University
    • Performing Untenable Pasts: Aesthetics and Selfhood in Kalavantula Communities of Coastal Andhra
Background readings:
"Whatever Happened to the South Indian Nautch?: Toward a Cultural History of Salon Dance in Madras"
(excerpt from an unpublished book manuscript entitled Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India)

Margaret Walker

  • Music, Queens University
    • First Ladies’ of Kathak: Choreography and Classicization
"Courtesans and choreographers: The (Re)Placement of Women in the History of Kathak Dance"

United States

Amanda Weidman

Video links from YouTube:
"Konjam Nilavu" play 0:40-1:50
"AR Rahman Concert live" play 0:30-1:09 (not as significant, can skip if nescessary)
"En Peru Meenakumari" play 0:00-1:15
Background readings:
"Behind the Scenes: Playback Singing and Ideologies of Voice in South India" (paper in progress which covers an earlier period)
See also: Weidman, Amanda. 2006. Singing the classical, voicing the modern: The postcolonial politics of music in South India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Amelia Maciszewski

Background readings:
"Texts, Tunes and Talking Heads: Discourses Surrounding Socially Marginal North Indian Musicians"
"'This is the only way we have to survive': Unraveling the Easy Metaphor of Sex Work at a Bombay Dancing Girls’ Bar" by Susan Dewey
"Publics and Counterpublics" by Michael Warner

Kaley Mason

  • Music/South Asian Studies, University of Chicago
    • Women Performing Social Change in Kerala's Cultural Public Sphere
"Marginal Feminine Musicianship in Kerala, South India: Telling Stories of Singing from Subaltern Locations"

Carol Babiracki

  • Music/ South Asian Studies, Syracuse University
    • Fading Subjectivities: Jharkhand’s New Generation of Female Dancers
"Between Life History and Performance: Sundari Devi and the Art of Allusion"

Matthew Allen

India

Shabi Ahmad

Details

  • Date: Monday March 15 and Tuesday March 16, 2009
  • Location: Arts Lounge, Arts Bldg, University of Alberta
    • Monday 9 am - 5pm: Individual Presentations / Discussion
8 pm: Vocal Recital, Kiran Ahluwalia, with Rez Abbasi
    • Tuesday 9 am - 1pm: Musical and Round Table Discussion,
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