The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781478019138)

In The Dancer's Voice Rumya Sree Putcha theorizes how the Indian classical dancer performs the complex dynamics of transnational Indian womanhood. Putcha argues that the public persona of the Indian dancer has come to represent India in the global imagination--a representation that supports caste hierarchies and Hindu ethnonationalism, as well as white supremacist model minority narratives. Generations of Indian women have been encouraged to embody the archetype of the dancer, popularized through film cultures from the 1930s to the present. Through analyses of films, immigration and marriage laws, histories of caste and race, advertising campaigns, and her own family's heirlooms, photographs, and memories, Putcha reveals how women's citizenship is based on separating their voices from their bodies. In listening closely to and for the dancer's voice, she offers a new way to understand the intersections of body, voice, performance, caste, race, gender, and nation.

Author: Rumya Sree Putcha
ISBN-10: 1478019131
ISBN-13: 9781478019138
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/09/2022
Pages: 208
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.44d