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

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Selected participants have been invited to submit relevant writings (published or unpublished) from their research for all participants to read ahead of time in order to facilitate discussion.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
::[[Media:YOUNG-~1.PDF|"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
::[[Media:Regula2.pdf|"Female Agency and Patrilineal Constraints"]]<br/>
::[http://www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/misc/article.pdf "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)
::[[Media:Going_Nautch_Girl.pdf|"'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: <br/>
:::[[Media:Soneji_Book_Chapter.pdf|"Whatever Happened to the South Indian Nautch?: Toward a Cultural History of Salon Dance in Madras"]]<br/>
:::(excerpt from an unpublished book manuscript entitled ''Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India'')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
::[[Media:Walker_Reading.pdf|"Courtesans and choreographers: The (Re)Placement of Women in the History of Kathak Dance"]]

== United States ==

'''Amanda Weidman'''
*Anthropology, Brynmore College
**[[Media:Edmonton_presentation(2).pdf|"Female Voices in the Public Sphere: The Changing Sound and Image of Playback Singers in Kollywood"]]
::Video links from YouTube: <br/>
:::[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHKf_HS9Puc "Konjam Nilavu"] play 0:40-1:50
:::[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-1a5mB-Mq8 "AR Rahman Concert live"]  play 0:30-1:09 (not as significant, can skip if nescessary)
:::[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2luEGZapiI "En Peru Meenakumari"] play 0:00-1:15
::Background readings: <br/>
:::[[Media:Weidman_SAR_paper.doc|"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'''
*Ethnomusicology/ South Asian Studies, Austin
**[[Media:Disrupted_Divas_story_line_3rd_draft_030310.doc|Disrupted Divas: North Indian Courtesans and Conflicting Pathways in the 21st Century]] <br/>
::Background readings: <br/>
:::[[Media:FINAL_MACISZEWSKI_16-1-.10.06_.doc|"Texts, Tunes and Talking Heads: Discourses Surrounding Socially Marginal North Indian Musicians"]] 
:::[[Media:Bombay_dancing_girls_article.doc|"'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 <br/>
:::[[Media:WarnerPublics&Counterpublics.pdf|"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
::[[Media:MASON_SEM_07_PAPER.pdf|"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
::[[Media:Babiracki_Life_History_&_Performance_2008001.pdf|"Between Life History and Performance: Sundari Devi and the Art of Allusion"]]
'''Matthew Allen'''
*Music, Wheaton College Boston
**"'[[Media:1146609.pdf|Rewriting' Refracted and Reexamined"]]

== India ==
  
'''Shabi Ahmad'''
*Indian Council of Historical Research
**[[Media:Revised_paper_final.doc|Changing Contours of Courtesans in 20th Century: A Historical Analysis]]

= 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,