Bishnupriya Dutt

Janelle Reinelt

Shrinkhla Sahai

This book explores how citizenship is differently gendered and performed across national and regional boundaries. Using ‘citizenship’ as its organizing concept, it is a collection of multidisciplinary approaches to legal, socio-cultural and performative aspects of gender construction and identity: violence against women, victimhood and agency, and everyday issues of socialization in a globalized world. It brings together scholars of politics, media, and performance who are committed to dialogue across both nation and discipline. This study is the culmination of a two-year project on the topic of 'Gendered Citizenship', arising from an international collaboration that has sought to develop a comparative and yet singular perspective on performance in relation to key political themes facing our countries of origin in the early decades of this century. The research is interdisciplinary and multinational, drawing on Indian, European, and North and South American contexts.

Manifestations and Performance

Gendered Citizenship

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

This book is a comprehensive critical history of women artistes in Indian theatre and dance of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Its underlying premise is that one cannot evaluate such performances in the Indian context without looking at dance and theatre together, unlike the course taken by traditional scholarship. The author weaves together issues of sexuality and colonialism, and culture and society to provide a holistic account of women performers in India. The distinguishing features of this book are: a close reading of archival materials, field surveys and extensive interviews that provide new information and insights. The book is divided into two sections, on the Actress and on the Danseuse, and displays how the two evolved in different ways. In doing this, it explores the theme of identity and body politics, while simultaneously balancing a historical narrative with emphasis on crucial individual topics. The book adopts a pluralistic approach combining history, economics, cultural studies, popular culture, anthropology, ethnography and feminist criticism. Archival photographs—some of which have never been published before—make it a collector’s item.

Bishnupriya Dutt

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