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Selected participants have been invited to submit relevant writings (published or unpublished) from their research for all participants to read ahead of time in order to facilitate discussion.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

title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Regula Qureshi

• Director Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology
  • "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
  • "'Going Nautch Girl' in the Fin de Siecle: The White Woman Burdened by Colonial Domesticity"

Stephen Slemon

• English and Film Studies, Postcolonial theory
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Jo-Ann Wallace

• Director, Women’s Studies
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Canada

Beverly Diamond

• CRC Ethnomusicology, Memorial University (Video Link)
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

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(excerpt from an unpublished book manuscript entitled Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India)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
  • "Courtesans and choreographers: The (Re)Placement of Women in the History of Kathak Dance"

United States

Amanda Weidman

• Anthropology, Brynmore College
  • The Changing Sound of Femininity in Tamil Cinema

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

• Ethnomusicology/ South Asian Studies, Austin
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Kaley Mason

• Music/South Asian Studies, University of Chicago
  • Women Performing Social Change in Kerala's Cultural Public Sphere

title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Carol Babiracki

• Music/ South Asian Studies, Syracuse University
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

Matthew Allen

• Music, Wheaton College Boston
  • "'Rewriting' Refracted and Reexamined"

India

Shabi Ahmad

• Indian Council of Historical Research
  • title of selection & link to page, uploaded document, etc.

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,