Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance across Borders in South Asia

by Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment, Jeff Roy, Simon Shepherd (Editor)

Overview

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, including those of nation, religion, genre, and identity.

This collaboratively authored 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 explores the form's changing status and analyses these performances' layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, to extend ways of understanding hijra-khwaja sira-trans performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350174542
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	11/03/2022
Series:	Forms of Drama
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

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.
Adnan Hossain is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He is the author of Beyond Emasculation: Pleasure and Power in the Making of Hijra in Bangladesh (2021).
Claire Pamment is Associate Professor of World Theatre and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, and Director of the GSWS Program at William&Mary, USA. Her collaborative work with khwaja sira-trans communities includes the devised theatre Teesri Dhun and the short film Vadhai. She is the author of Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhand (2017).
Jeff Roy is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Liberal Studies at Cal Poly Pomona (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), USA. Their creative collaborations with queer and trans-hijra communities have given rise to several award-winning short- and feature-length films with support from such organizations as Film Independent, Fulbright-mtvU, Fulbright-Hays, and Godrej India Culture Lab. Their scholarly writings appear in such journals as Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Feminist Review, MUSICultures, QED, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and in the books Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology and Remapping Sound Studies.
SIMON SHEPHERD is Professor of Theatre and Deputy Principal (Academic) at the Central School of Speech and Drama, UK.

Table of Contents

Series Preface

List of Figures

Foreword, Gayatri Reddy (University of Illinois, USA)

Acknowledgments

Introduction, Adnan Hossain (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), Claire Pamment (William&Mary, USA), and Jeff Roy (California State Polytechnic University, USA)

1. Badhai as Dis/ability: Meaning, Context and Community in Bangladesh, Adnan Hossain (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
2. Shifting Orientations: Vadhai in Pakistan, Claire Pamment (William&Mary, USA)
3. Movements Through Badhai Sonic Arrangements in India, Jeff Roy (California State Polytechnic University, USA)

Further Notes on an Inconclusive Practice..., Adnan Hossain (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), Claire Pamment (William&Mary, USA), and Jeff Roy (California State Polytechnic University, USA)

Postscript, Kareem Khubchandani (Tufts University, USA)

Glossary
Notes
References
Index