Impersonations

The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath

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English

University of California Press
25 June 2019

Hindu worship, rites & ceremonies; Social & cultural anthropology

Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

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.

By: Harshita Mruthinti Kamath
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9780520301665
ISBN 10: 0520301668
Pages: 215
Publication Date: 25 June 2019
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Assistant Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History at Emory University.

Reviews for Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance

"""In her excellent analysis of the arrival of the Indian classical dance Kuchipudi on the transnational stage, Kamath charts transformations in Kuchipudi narrative and performance. . . .Kamath cogently articulates these subversive possibilities through ideas of impersonation. Her work adds to the growing body of scholarly work on classical Indian dances that re-examines the cultural and gender politics of classicism as these forms are nationalized and globalized, and, in the current climate, increasingly integrated with the politics of Hindutva."" * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *"