{"id":516,"date":"2018-07-18T12:29:56","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T17:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=516"},"modified":"2018-07-19T10:20:59","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T15:20:59","slug":"meduri-avanthi-nation-woman-representation-the-sutured-history-of-the-devadasi-and-her-dance-dissertation-new-york-university-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=516","title":{"rendered":"Meduri, Avanthi. Nation, Woman, Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and Her Dance. Dissertation, New York University, 1996."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Summary<\/b><\/p>\n<p>From page xiii:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;Nation, Woman, Representation: the Sutured History of the devadasi and her Dance&#8217; examines the complex interplay of national and international events, the impact of Western modernization on the life and artistic practices of a class of South Indian women known as devadasis or temple-dancers\u2026the traditional practice was radically transformed in the late nineteenth and twentieth century practices of Indian nationalism when devadasis and their artistic practices began to be idealized and hailed as the quintessential signs, symbols and metaphors of the ancient Indian nation. If the devadasis were derided as temple prostitutes in the 1890s, their artistic practices were reclaimed in the 1920s, and described by A.K. Coomaraswamy and Annie Besant, as the immortal dance of Shiva. The artistic practices were subsequently aestheticized and renamed in the ideological metaphor and name of India, that is, as Bharatanatyam, the national dance of India. The transmogrification of many names into the one name of Bharatanatyam manifested itself as an unprecedented cultural phenomenon in the history of Indian nationalism because five master-discourses\u2014 colonialism, Orientalism, internationalism, Indian nationalism, plus another indigenous discourse, which I identify as the local, artistic history of the devadasi\u2014 came to be imbricated in the cultural reconfigurations effected first in the 1890s, repeated in the 1920s. I shall here\u2026 describe how selected traces from the artistic history of the nineteenth century were carefully reclaimed, reassembled, and sutured on to the visual bodies of living devadasis and middle-class women in the twentieth practices of cultural nationalism.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary From page xiii: &#8220;&#8216;Nation, Woman, Representation: the Sutured History of the devadasi and her Dance&#8217; examines the complex interplay of national and international events, the impact of Western modernization on the life and artistic practices of a class of South Indian women known as devadasis or temple-dancers\u2026the traditional practice was radically transformed in the <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=516\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[55,83,82,64],"tags":[36,24,34,23,33,26],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dance","category-history","category-history-dance","category-history-devadasis","tag-bharatanatyam","tag-dance","tag-devadasi","tag-history","tag-nationalism","tag-secondary-source"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}