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Widows of Colonial Bengal: Gender, Morality, and Cultural Representation seeks to explore the unique vulnerability and precarity of widowhood in Bengal during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A major purpose of this study is to re-examine the official and indigenous discourses surrounding the widely debated Widow Remarriage Act of 1856; another is to situate the 'widow problem'-rooted in the historical context of a heightened preoccupation with marriage, remarriage, sexuality and survival-within contemporary cultural representations. The focus of this volume is the tussle between the colonial state, reformist demands, and nationalist pressures, mapping out the shifting diagnosis of the moral and material ills associated with widowhood. While exploring the dynamic interplay between devotion and deviance, this book also offers glimpses into some widows' acts of resistance.
Aimed at addressing the lacunae in academic publications on women dancers in India, The Moving Space highlights the idea of the 'space' created, occupied and negotiated by women in Indian dance. It initiates a conversation between dance scholarship and women's studies, and brings together scholars from a multidisciplinary background, emphasizing that research and practice have roots in both these specific areas. This book takes dance as a critical starting point, and endeavours to create an inclusive discourse around the female dancer and the historic, gendered and contested 'space(s)' that accommodate or are created by her. Highlighting the scope and necessity of using feminist theories in ...
Aimed at addressing the lacunae in academic publications on women dancers in India, The Moving Space highlights the idea of the 'space' created, occupied and negotiated by women in Indian dance. It initiates a conversation between dance scholarship and women's studies, and brings together scholars from a multidisciplinary background, emphasizing that research and practice have roots in both these specific areas. This book takes dance as a critical starting point, and endeavours to create an inclusive discourse around the female dancer and the historic, gendered and contested 'space(s)' that accommodate or are created by her. Highlighting the scope and necessity of using feminist theories in ...
This book, with its focus on the dancing body, is the first of its kind within the larger context of dance in India. The Dancing Body is a body that exists, survives, inhabits and performs in multiple space and time, by moving, laboring, migrating and straddling across geographic, cultural and emotional borders, writing different cultural meanings at different moments of time. In India, discourses around the body in dance have long been trapped within hagiographic histories in and around dancers and their dance. During the last few decades, however, significant scholarly inroads were made into the domain of dance by shaking up the stereotypes, assertions and labels, shaped and moulded by pat...
This volume presents a multidisciplinary perspective on dance scholarship and practice as they have evolved in India and its diaspora, outlining how dance histories have been written and re-written, how aesthetic and pedagogical conventions have changed and are changing, and how politico-economic shifts have shaped Indian dance and its negotiation with modernity.. Written by eminent and emergent scholars and practitioners of Indian dance, the articles make dance a foundational socio-cultural and aesthetic phenomena that reflects and impacts upon various cultural intercourses -- from art and architecture to popular culture, and social justice issues. They also highlight the interplay of vario...
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 i...
This monograph breaks new ground by weaving stories of fathers and children into the history of gender, family and nation in colonial India. Focusing on the reformist Bengali Hindu and Brahmo communities, the author contends that fatherhood assumed new meaning and significance in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. During this time of social and political change, fathers extended their roles beyond breadwinning to take an active part in rearing their children. Utilizing pedagogic literature, articles in scientific journals, autobiographies, correspondence, and published essays, Fathers in a Motherland documents the different ways the authority and power of the father was invok...