Deborah Kapchan
Biographic Data
| ID | 79524 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah Kapchan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah |
| FAMILY NAME | Kapchan |
| SIGNATURE | KAPCHAN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deborah Kapchan is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at New York University. A Guggenheim fellow, she is the author of Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Music and Trance in the Global Marketplace (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), as well as numerous articles on sound, narrative, and poetics. She is currently editing two volumes: Intangible Rights: Cultural Heritage in Transit ... |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Notes on a Scattered Subject in Montmartre
The work of artist/anthropologist Susan Marie Ossman and her 12-station exhibition in Montmartre in 2020 lends itself to a personal meditation on art and illness during a global pandemic. Walking the neighborhood where the installations were created and assembled, Ossman’s artwork becomes a means of transforming the experience of chemotherapy and suggests how the cancer treatments themselves refl ect on a larger society of illness. Most important…
"A Gesture Narrowly Divides Us From Chaos"
Incense swirls around me in thick clouds: jawi, musk, lambre . The names themselves are intoxicating. Frankincense, musk, myrrh, black and white benzoin, ambergris; the resinous rocks melt on the hot coals of the earthen brazier. Not like wax melts, but first sizzling, the pieces of incense bubble up like hot glass, then drip down the sides of the charcoal as if to envelope and snuff it out. Instead they turn into a yellowish liquid on the redden…
Intimate Entanglements in the Ethnography of Performance
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Body
Cultural Heritage in Transit
Analyzing "heritage events"—from Roma wedding music to Trinidadian wining, Moroccan verbal art, and neopagan rituals— Cultural Heritage in Transit tracks the effects of the heritage industry, focusing on cultural rights and human rights writ large
The Aesthetics of the Invisible
Is listening a performance? How do “invisible” practices like Sufi Muslim sama', or sacred listening, impact the public and secular spaces of contemporary France? What do listening acts reveal about the political viability and performativity of sacred listening in a secular nation
Moroccan Households in the World Economy
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
A Colonial Relation Not My Own. Coming Home to Morocco and France
Berber Culture on the World Stage
Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Jane E. Goodman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 239 pp
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
Commentary
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Gender on the Market
"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society."— Choice
Inscribed Surfaces
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Gender on the Market
"Kapchan's splendid enthnographic study of women's performance genres in Beni Mellal, Morocco, is an outstanding contribution to gender studies and to the understanding of Middle Eastern society."— Choice
Inscribed Surfaces
Impasse of the Angels
Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from. Moroccan Space of Memory. Stefania Pandolfo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xi. 389 pp., notes, index
Commentary
Talking trash
Austin, Texas, has long been recognized for its racial and ethnic segregation. Policies created in 1927 officially segregated the city, and the public landscape has remained divided. How does a cosmopolitan community of difference constitute itself against the dominant Anglo culture of this Texan city? Analyzing the speech genre of "trash talk" in salsa-club culture, I demonstrate how affect is created in language and how this speech genre co-occ…
A Colonial Relation Not My Own. Coming Home to Morocco and France
Berber Culture on the World Stage
Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Jane E. Goodman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 239 pp
The Festive Sacred and the Fetish of Trance
What happens when a sacred and local practice such as trance is made into a fetish, detaching itself from its context of origin and circulating in transnational markets and international music festivals as a sign that carries its own power? When a ritual practice is so appropriated, it not only affects its performance context - the social milieu of its exchange - but the practice itself is transformed. This is the case with what is often called "…
Moroccan Households in the World Economy
The Aesthetics of the Invisible
Is listening a performance? How do “invisible” practices like Sufi Muslim sama', or sacred listening, impact the public and secular spaces of contemporary France? What do listening acts reveal about the political viability and performativity of sacred listening in a secular nation
Cultural Heritage in Transit
Analyzing "heritage events"—from Roma wedding music to Trinidadian wining, Moroccan verbal art, and neopagan rituals— Cultural Heritage in Transit tracks the effects of the heritage industry, focusing on cultural rights and human rights writ large
Body
Slow Activism
For what is needed is a philosophy of listening. But is this a possibility? If philosophy has its very roots intertwined with a secret vision of Being that has resulted in the present state of visualism, can it listen with equal profundity? What is called for is an ontology of the auditory
Intimate Entanglements in the Ethnography of Performance
"A Gesture Narrowly Divides Us From Chaos"
Incense swirls around me in thick clouds: jawi, musk, lambre . The names themselves are intoxicating. Frankincense, musk, myrrh, black and white benzoin, ambergris; the resinous rocks melt on the hot coals of the earthen brazier. Not like wax melts, but first sizzling, the pieces of incense bubble up like hot glass, then drip down the sides of the charcoal as if to envelope and snuff it out. Instead they turn into a yellowish liquid on the redden…
Notes on a Scattered Subject in Montmartre
The work of artist/anthropologist Susan Marie Ossman and her 12-station exhibition in Montmartre in 2020 lends itself to a personal meditation on art and illness during a global pandemic. Walking the neighborhood where the installations were created and assembled, Ossman’s artwork becomes a means of transforming the experience of chemotherapy and suggests how the cancer treatments themselves refl ect on a larger society of illness. Most important…
Sociology (10 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art (6 works) · History (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Communication (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · History (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works)