Rumya S Putcha
Biographic Data
| ID | 925804 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rumya S Putcha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rumya S |
| FAMILY NAME | Putcha |
| SIGNATURE | PUTCHA R S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Georgia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4697-7402 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Gender, Caste, and South Asian Performance in the Decolonial Turn
In the last 70 years, research on caste, gender, and performance in South Asia has evolved into a rich field of study. In the humanities and social sciences, scholars and practitioners of music, dance, theater, and film in India, the U.K., Australia, and the United States, positioned in sociology, anthropology, dance, theater and performance studies, religious studies, and ethnomusicology have examined how performance cultures uniquely animate th…
Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures
Conversations Follow: Featuring Books by Omar Kasmani, Kareem Khubchandani and Elliot Powell
From Elsewhere
Yeeyeenation: Country Boys and the Mythopoetics of White Public Culture
Using methods from country music studies, performance studies, hashtag ethnography, and Black Feminist Thought (BFT), this article employs sonic, discursive, and social media analysis to examine performances of White masculinity known as “country boys.” In the opening sections, I describe examples of country boys that emerge from Texas A&M University (College Station), bringing together confederate statues and the men who identify with and defend…
The Mythical Courtesan
This article interrogates how and why courtesan identities are simultaneously embraced and disavowed by Brahman dancers. Using a combination of ethnographic and critical feminist methods, which allow the author to toggle between the past and the present, between India and the United States, and between film analysis and the dance studio, the author examines the cultural politics of the romanticized and historical Indian dancer-the mythical courte…
After Eat, Pray, Love: Tourism, Orientalism, and cartographies of salvation
This article examines certain kinds of travel and tourism as extensions of colonial and examples of neocolonial forms of Orientalist engagement between the global North and global South. Focusing on areas that border the Indian Ocean, and the South Asian context in particular, I interrogate the gendered, racial, and geopolitical attachments that have historically drawn and continue to draw travelers to the region for tourism. I refer to these att…
Yoga and White Public Space
This article connects recent work in critical race studies, museum studies, and performance studies to larger conversations happening across the humanities and social sciences on the role of performance in white public spaces. Specifically, I examine the recent trend of museums such as the Natural History Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name but a few, offering meditation and…
The Modern Courtesan: Gender, Religion and Dance in Transnational India
This article exposes the role of expressive culture in the rise and spread of late twentieth-century Hindu identity politics. I examine how Hindu nationalism is fuelled by an affective attachment to the Indian classical dancer. I analyse the affective logics that have crystallised around the now iconic Indian classical dancer and have situated her gendered and athletic body as a transnational, globally circulating emblem of an authentic Hindu and…
Gender, caste, and feminist praxis in transnational South India
In the past 70 years, certain kinds of Indian dance have been read as classical or aspirational, especially when performed by or associated with Hindu/high-caste people and in cosmopolitan spaces like Chennai or San Francisco. Inversely, certain dancers and dance techniques associated with those who stand apart from caste or religious status are dismissed as poor in quality, and not worthy of emulation. In this article, I examine how such logic o…
Dancing in Place: Mythopoetics and the Production of History in Kuchipudi
In the twenty-first century, the term "kuchipudi" refers to a style of dance, a South Indian classical genre which, to the untrained eye, is indistinguishable from its better-known cousin,bharatanatyam.After India achieved Independence from the British in 1947,kuchipudicame to be known as a dance style synonymous with the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.Kuchipudi's metonymic status reveals a broader logic of linguistic, geographically gro…
Between History and Historiography: The Origins of Classical Kuchipudi Dance
This article examines the intertwined discourses and debates of classicism, linguistic regionalism, caste, and gender in the case of South Indian dance. By focusing on the dance form, Kuchipudi, from Andhra Pradesh, the first administrative region in India formed on the basis of language, this study exposes the important connections between identity politics and the creation of cultural icons, such as classical dance. This study deconstructs the …
After Eat, Pray, Love: Tourism, Orientalism, and cartographies of salvation
This article examines certain kinds of travel and tourism as extensions of colonial and examples of neocolonial forms of Orientalist engagement between the global North and global South. Focusing on areas that border the Indian Ocean, and the South Asian context in particular, I interrogate the gendered, racial, and geopolitical attachments that have historically drawn and continue to draw travelers to the region for tourism. I refer to these att…
Yoga and White Public Space
This article connects recent work in critical race studies, museum studies, and performance studies to larger conversations happening across the humanities and social sciences on the role of performance in white public spaces. Specifically, I examine the recent trend of museums such as the Natural History Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name but a few, offering meditation and…
Dancing in Place: Mythopoetics and the Production of History in Kuchipudi
In the twenty-first century, the term "kuchipudi" refers to a style of dance, a South Indian classical genre which, to the untrained eye, is indistinguishable from its better-known cousin,bharatanatyam.After India achieved Independence from the British in 1947,kuchipudicame to be known as a dance style synonymous with the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.Kuchipudi's metonymic status reveals a broader logic of linguistic, geographically gro…
Conversations Follow: Featuring Books by Omar Kasmani, Kareem Khubchandani and Elliot Powell
From Elsewhere
Gender, caste, and feminist praxis in transnational South India
In the past 70 years, certain kinds of Indian dance have been read as classical or aspirational, especially when performed by or associated with Hindu/high-caste people and in cosmopolitan spaces like Chennai or San Francisco. Inversely, certain dancers and dance techniques associated with those who stand apart from caste or religious status are dismissed as poor in quality, and not worthy of emulation. In this article, I examine how such logic o…
Between History and Historiography: The Origins of Classical Kuchipudi Dance
This article examines the intertwined discourses and debates of classicism, linguistic regionalism, caste, and gender in the case of South Indian dance. By focusing on the dance form, Kuchipudi, from Andhra Pradesh, the first administrative region in India formed on the basis of language, this study exposes the important connections between identity politics and the creation of cultural icons, such as classical dance. This study deconstructs the …
Dancing in Place: Mythopoetics and the Production of History in Kuchipudi
In the twenty-first century, the term "kuchipudi" refers to a style of dance, a South Indian classical genre which, to the untrained eye, is indistinguishable from its better-known cousin,bharatanatyam.After India achieved Independence from the British in 1947,kuchipudicame to be known as a dance style synonymous with the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra Pradesh.Kuchipudi's metonymic status reveals a broader logic of linguistic, geographically gro…
Gender, caste, and feminist praxis in transnational South India
In the past 70 years, certain kinds of Indian dance have been read as classical or aspirational, especially when performed by or associated with Hindu/high-caste people and in cosmopolitan spaces like Chennai or San Francisco. Inversely, certain dancers and dance techniques associated with those who stand apart from caste or religious status are dismissed as poor in quality, and not worthy of emulation. In this article, I examine how such logic o…
After Eat, Pray, Love: Tourism, Orientalism, and cartographies of salvation
This article examines certain kinds of travel and tourism as extensions of colonial and examples of neocolonial forms of Orientalist engagement between the global North and global South. Focusing on areas that border the Indian Ocean, and the South Asian context in particular, I interrogate the gendered, racial, and geopolitical attachments that have historically drawn and continue to draw travelers to the region for tourism. I refer to these att…
Yoga and White Public Space
This article connects recent work in critical race studies, museum studies, and performance studies to larger conversations happening across the humanities and social sciences on the role of performance in white public spaces. Specifically, I examine the recent trend of museums such as the Natural History Museum of London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name but a few, offering meditation and…
The Modern Courtesan: Gender, Religion and Dance in Transnational India
This article exposes the role of expressive culture in the rise and spread of late twentieth-century Hindu identity politics. I examine how Hindu nationalism is fuelled by an affective attachment to the Indian classical dancer. I analyse the affective logics that have crystallised around the now iconic Indian classical dancer and have situated her gendered and athletic body as a transnational, globally circulating emblem of an authentic Hindu and…
The Mythical Courtesan
This article interrogates how and why courtesan identities are simultaneously embraced and disavowed by Brahman dancers. Using a combination of ethnographic and critical feminist methods, which allow the author to toggle between the past and the present, between India and the United States, and between film analysis and the dance studio, the author examines the cultural politics of the romanticized and historical Indian dancer-the mythical courte…
Yeeyeenation: Country Boys and the Mythopoetics of White Public Culture
Using methods from country music studies, performance studies, hashtag ethnography, and Black Feminist Thought (BFT), this article employs sonic, discursive, and social media analysis to examine performances of White masculinity known as “country boys.” In the opening sections, I describe examples of country boys that emerge from Texas A&M University (College Station), bringing together confederate statues and the men who identify with and defend…
Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures
Conversations Follow: Featuring Books by Omar Kasmani, Kareem Khubchandani and Elliot Powell
From Elsewhere
Gender, Caste, and South Asian Performance in the Decolonial Turn
In the last 70 years, research on caste, gender, and performance in South Asia has evolved into a rich field of study. In the humanities and social sciences, scholars and practitioners of music, dance, theater, and film in India, the U.K., Australia, and the United States, positioned in sociology, anthropology, dance, theater and performance studies, religious studies, and ethnomusicology have examined how performance cultures uniquely animate th…
Sociology (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Art (9 works) · History (9 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Diversity and Impact of Dance (7 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Dance (5 works)