TuTh, 11:15 AM-12:30 PM, MJ 124
Required film screening:  Th, 7:00 PM-10:00 PM
Fulfills COLL S&H Requirement

Instructor: Susan Seizer
E-Mail: sseizer@indiana.edu
Office: Mottier Hall 150
Phone: 856-1986

This course looks at South Asian culture through the lens of
performance, and at performance through the lens of South Asian
culture. Culture and performance always exist in dialogue; our aim
here is to make that dialogue explicit, and to understand the
multiple participants in it. We will read six ethnographies of
performance in contemporary India, beginning with cultural
formations of the self and moving into increasingly complex
externalized forms. The ethnographies trace this trajectory through
a range of sites of cultural expressivity in both rural and urban
India, including: 1) daily rites of interaction that constitute self
and personhood; 2) collective ritual embodiments given life through
festivals; 3) the socio-historical development of staged theatrical
enactments of the tensions in modern identity; 4) the class politics
of the prolific Indian cinema industry; 5) and the pursuit of
globalized consumerism in the Indian advertising business. In
addition to learning from these written ethnographies, we will view
a range of films that represent South Asian culture through a broad
range of performative events (films include Gandhi; Lagaan; Salangai
Oli; Monsoon Wedding; Fire; and others).