Description
This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to badhai performances throughout South Asia, examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Badhai's repertoires of songs, dances, prayers, and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised hijra, khwaja sira, and trans communities. They commemorate weddings, births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts, but also moves across borders. For students of theatre and performance, anthropology, religion, gender and cultural studies, this book illuminates an important form of performance, considering its changing status and uncertain futures.
The book draws from anthropology, theatre and performance studies, music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, queer and transgender studies, and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine badhai's place-based dynamics, transcultural features, and communications across the hijrascape. This vital study analyses these performances' layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, extending ways of understanding hijra-khwaja sira-trans performance.
Author: Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment, Jeff Roy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 12/01/2022
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.74lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781350174535
ISBN10: 135017453X
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Theater | History & Criticism
- Drama | Asian | General
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
About the Author
Adnan Hossain is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Claire Pamment is Associate Professor of World Theatre and Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, William & Mary, USA.
Jeff Roy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Studies, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA.