Gender and Story in South India

by Leela Prasad (Editor), Ruth B. Bottigheimer (Editor), Lalita Handoo (Editor)

Overview

Gender and Story in South India presents exciting ethnographic research by Indian women scholars on Hindu and Muslim women-centered oral narratives. The book is unique for its geographic and linguistic focus on South India, for its inclusion of urban and rural locales of narration, and for its exploration of shared Hindu and Muslim female space. Drawing on the worldviews of South Indian female narrators in both everyday and performative settings, the contributors lead readers away from customary and comfortable assumptions about gender distinctions in India to experience a more dialogical, poetically ordered moral universe that is sensitive to women's material and spiritual lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791468715
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	09/14/2006
Series:	SUNY series in Hindu Studies
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Leela Prasad is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Indian Religions at Duke University. Ruth B. Bottigheimer teaches Comparative Literature at Stony Brook University, State University of New York, and is the author of several books, including Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition. Lalita Handoo is Associate Professor of Lexicography and Folklore at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, India, and is the author of several books, including Structural Analysis of Kashmiri Folktales.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     vii
Anklets on the Pyal: Women Present Women's Stories from South India   Leela Prasad     1
The Son-in-law Story: Gender and Genre   Lalita Handoo     35
The Role of Gender in Tale-Telling Events   Saraswathi Venugopal     35
Voiced Worlds: Heroines and Healers in Muslim Women's Narratives   K. V. S. Lakshmi Narasamamba     67
Transformation of Gender Roles: Converging Identities in Personal and Poetic Narratives   P. S. Kanaka Durga     87
Afterword   Ruth B. Bottigheimer     141
Contributors     143
Index     147