[Hum_Calendar_Events] REMINDER: CISA Lecture on Feb.28: Gender, Race, and Spectatorship in Early Indian Cinema]

[CDH Help Desk]

---------------------------------------------

The UCLA Center for India and South Asia invites you to:

"Gender, Race, and Spectatorship in Early Indian Cinema"

Lecture-cum-visual presentation by Kathryn Hansen, University of Texas
at Austin

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
(Light refreshments will be served)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

In most studies of Indian cinema, films of the 1940s and beyond are
taken as the classic texts that constitute a national cinema. The early
Indian cinema has attracted much less attention, being deemed either
part of a global visual culture or, worse, imitative of Hollywood. This
talk focuses on the pre-40s filmic representation of gendered and racial
identities, examining two casting practices that were once familiar and
widely deployed, and yet today seem strange. These are the choice of men
to play women's parts, and the use of European or 'white' actresses
posing as Indian. Both these masquerades can be located in prior
theatrical traditions of western India, especially the Parsi theatre.
The spectatorial pleasures that such performances divulged will be
illustrated through a series of slides from the screen and the stage.

Kathryn Hansen is a scholar of Hindi and Urdu specializing in the
history of north Indian theatrical traditions. She is Professor of South
Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as
Director of the Center for Asian Studies (2000-04). She has authored
Grounds for
Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India (1992), co-edited with David
Lelyveld A Wilderness of Possibilities: Urdu Studies in Transnational
Perspective (2005), and translated and edited The Parsi Theatre: Its
Origins and Development by Somnath Gupt (2005).


For more information on our recent and upcoming events, please visit our
website at http://www.international.ucla.edu/southasia


--
UCLA Center for India and South Asia
11387 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487
Tel: 310-206-2654
http://www.international.ucla.edu/southasia/