Impersonations the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in South Indian dance
"Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don stri-vesam (woman's guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religio...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Oakland, California
University of California Press
2019, [2019]©2019
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| Collection: | JSTOR Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | "Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don stri-vesam (woman's guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance circumscribed to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. However, the power of the brahmin male body in stri-vesam is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian dance form. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries--village to urban, brahmin to non-brahmin, hegemonic to non-normative--to explore the artifice of brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance"--Provided by publisher |
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| Physical Description: | xv, 225 pages illustrations, maps |
| ISBN: | 0520301668 9780520301665 0520972236 |