Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh

Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh
Author: Manujendra Kundu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2024-02-25
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 019287151X

Covering nearly 225 years, this volume tries to capture a broad spectrum of the situation of women performers from Gerasim Lebedeff's time (1795), who are considered to be the first performers in modern Bengali theatre, to today's time. The moot question is whether the role of women as performers evolved down the centuries. Whether this question will lead us to their subjugation to their male counterparts, producers, and directors has been explored here to give readers an understanding of when, where, by whom the politics began, and, by tracing the footprints, we have tried to understand if the politics has changed, or remains unchanged, or metamorphosed with regard to the woman's question in the performance discourse. We have explored, in this regard, how her body, mind, and sexuality interacted with and negotiated the phallocentric hierarchy. The essays included are on (i) Baiji/Tawaif culture in eastern and western Bengal; (ii) prostitute/'fallen' women/ patita, beshya performers; (iii) IPTA and the Naxalbari movement; (iv) group and commercial/professional theatre of Kolkata; (v) women's position in the theatre of Bangladesh; (vi) Cabaret (with an interview with Miss Shefali) (vii) Jatra; (viii) Baul tradition. (ix) Besides, there are chapters on English, Anglo-Indian, Jew, Nachni performers and the illustrious dancer Amala Shankar, and film-music-dance in general.

Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh

Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh
Author: Manujendra Kundu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2023-10-31
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0192699369

Covering nearly 225 years, this volume tries to capture a broad spectrum of the situation of women performers from Gerasim Lebedeff's time (1795), who are considered to be the first performers in modern Bengali theatre, to today's time. The moot question is whether the role of women as performers evolved down the centuries. Whether this question will lead us to their subjugation to their male counterparts, producers, and directors has been explored here to give readers an understanding of when, where, by whom the politics began, and, by tracing the footprints, we have tried to understand if the politics has changed, or remains unchanged, or metamorphosed with regard to the woman's question in the performance discourse. We have explored, in this regard, how her body, mind, and sexuality interacted with and negotiated the phallocentric hierarchy. The essays included are on (i) Baiji/Tawaif culture in eastern and western Bengal; (ii) prostitute/'fallen' women/ patita, beshya performers; (iii) IPTA and the Naxalbari movement; (iv) group and commercial/professional theatre of Kolkata; (v) women's position in the theatre of Bangladesh; (vi) Cabaret (with an interview with Miss Shefali) (vii) Jatra; (viii) Baul tradition. (ix) Besides, there are chapters on English, Anglo-Indian, Jew, Nachni performers and the illustrious dancer Amala Shankar, and film-music-dance in general.

The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music

The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music
Author: Rhiannon Mathias
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0429575041

The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music presents a unique collection of core research by academics and music practitioners from around the world, engaging with an extraordinarily wide range of topics on women’s contributions to Western and Eastern art music, popular music, world music, music education, ethnomusicology as well as in the music industries. The handbook falls into six parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the rich variety of subject matter the reader can expect to encounter in the handbook as a whole. Part II focuses on what might be termed the more traditional strand of feminist musicology – research which highlights the work of historical and/or neglected composers. Part III explores topics concerned with feminist aesthetics and music creation and Part IV focuses on questions addressing the performance and reception of music and musicians. The narrative of the handbook shifts in Part V to focus on opportunities and leadership in the music professions from a Western perspective. The final section of the handbook (Part VI) provides new frames of context for women’s positions as workers, educators, patrons, activists and promoters of music. This is a key reference work for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in music and gender.

The Poet’s Song

The Poet’s Song
Author: Priyanka Basu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2023-08-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000960889

This book explores the ‘folk’ performance genre of Kobigaan, a dialogic song-theatre form in which performers verse-duel, in contemporary West Bengal in India and Bangladesh. Thought to be a nearly extinct form, the book shows how the genre is still prevalent in the region. The author shows how like many other ‘folk’ practices in South and South-East Asia, the content and format of this genre has undergone vital changes thus raising questions of authenticity, patronage and cultural politics. She captures live performances of Kobigaan through ethnographies spread across borders — from village rituals to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and new media. While understanding Kobigaan from the practitioners’ points-of-view, this book also explores the crucial issues of gender, marginalization and representation that is true of any performance genre. Drawing on case studies, it underlines the issues of artistic agency, empowerment, cultural labour and heritage, ritual, authenticity, creative industries, media, gender, and identity politics. Part of the ‘South Asian History and Culture’ series, this book is a major intervention in South Asian folklore and performance studies. It also expands into the larger disciplines of literature, social and cultural movements in South Asia, ethnomusicology and the politics of performance.

Asian Women Artists

Asian Women Artists
Author: Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-10-18
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1476689253

This book is a guide to identifying female creators and artistic movements from all parts of Asia, offering a broad spectrum of media and presentation representing a wide variety of milieus, regions, peoples and genres. Arranged chronologically by artist birth date, entries date as far back as Leizu's Chinese sericulture in 2700 BCE and continue all the way to the March 2021 mural exhibition by Malaysian painter Caryn Koh. Entries feature biographical information, cultural context and a survey of notable works. Covering creators known for prophecy, dance, epic and oratory, the compendium includes obscure artists and more familiar names, like biblical war poet Deborah, Judaean dancer Salome, Byzantine Empress Theodora and Myanmar freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi. In an effort to relieve unfamiliarity with parts of the world poorly represented in art history, this book focuses on Asian women often passed over in global art surveys.

Public Women in British India

Public Women in British India
Author: Rimli Bhattacharya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429016557

This book foregrounds the subjectivity of ‘acting women’ amidst violent debates on femininity and education, livelihood and labour, sexuality and marriage. It looks at the emergence of the stage actress as an artist and an ideological construct at critical phases of performance practice in British India. The focus here is on Calcutta, considered the ‘second city of the Empire’ and a nodal point in global trade circuits. Each chapter offers new ways of conceptualising the actress as a professional, a colonial subject, simultaneously the other and the model of the ‘new woman’. An underlying motif is the playing out of the idea of spiritual salvation, redemption and modernity. Analysing the dynamics behind stagecraft and spectacle, the study highlights the politics of demarcation and exclusion of social roles. It presents rich archival work from diverse sources, many translated for the first time. This book makes a distinctive contribution in intertwining performance studies with literary history and art practices within a cross-cultural framework. Interdisciplinary and innovative, it will appeal to scholars and researchers in South Asian theatre and performance studies, history and gender studies.

Women in Bengal

Women in Bengal
Author: Sudarshana Sen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2024-07-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040109586

This book analyses the status of women in Bengal, India, by examining the versatile everyday living conditions of women, and how they are represented as individuals and as a category in the media. Contributors to the book start their discussion from the point that women in India have a varied experience of living, thinking, and acting specific to the regional cultural context. Caste ideology specified privileges and sanctions according to innate attributes, differ by sex as well as ethnicity, class, caste, minority status, and marginal position intersect lives and render unique life experiences. With a focus on women and their lived experiences, performances by them and performances imitating women’s roles, the book offers a complex and rich analysis of the reality of women’s lives based on research and reflections by 25 scholars. Organised into two sections, the book presents women in reality, their living conditions, struggles, and women as represented in films, stories, framed in plots sometimes by women and sometimes by men. The chapters provide insights on how institutionalised gender distinctions create subordination and marginality of women and their struggles to survive in a society dominated by heteropatriarchal ideology and its practice. This book improves our understanding of various dimensions of gender and transgender relations in India. It will be of interest to researchers in Gender Studies, South Asian Culture and Society, and Studies on India.

Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World (2 vols.)

Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World (2 vols.)
Author: Susan Sinclair
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 1508
Release: 2012-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9047412079

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

Making Kantha, Making Home

Making Kantha, Making Home
Author: Pika Ghosh
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-07-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0295747005

In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use them as shawls, covers, and seating mats. Making Kantha, Making Home explores the social worlds shaped by the Bengali kantha that survive from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the first study of colonial-period women’s embroidery that situates these objects historically and socially, Pika Ghosh brings technique and aesthetic choices into discussion with iconography and regional culture. Ghosh uses ethnographic and archival research, inscriptions, and images to locate embroiderers’ work within domestic networks and to show how imagery from poetry, drama, prints, and watercolors expresses kantha artists’ visual literacy. Affinities with older textile practices include the region’s lucrative maritime trade in embroideries with Europe, Africa, and China. This appraisal of individual objects alongside the people and stories behind the objects’ creation elevates kantha beyond consideration as mere handcraft to recognition as art.

Re-imagining South Asian Religions

Re-imagining South Asian Religions
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2012-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004242376

Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences. Moving away from canonical texts, established authorities, and received historiography, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological perspectives including philosophy, history, hermeneutics, migration and diaspora studies, ethnography, performance studies, lived religion approaches, and aesthetics. Reflecting a balance of theory and substantive content, the papers in this volume call into question key critical terms, challenge established frames of reference, and offer innovative and alternative interpretations of South Asian ways of knowing and being.