Free for Members. Reservatio ns Encouraged.
\nJoin Dr. Mrinalini Rajagopal an\, Associate Professor and Chair\, Department of History of Art and Arc hitecture at the University of Pittsburgh\, for this exciting evening lec ture.
\nIn 1926 British colonial archaeologists found a bron ze statue depicting a woman in Mohenjodaro (now Pakistan). Small enough t o fit in the palm of a hand and made close to 4000 years ago\, the figure wears only jewelry and sports an elaborate hairdo. Perhaps it was her po sture: one arm akimbo resting on her waist and leg bent at the knee\, tha t led the male archaeologists to dub her the Dancing Girl. Since then\, archaeologists\, curators\, and art historians have suggested tha t she could just as easily represent a female warrior\, laborer\, or devo tee. Yet\, the sculpture continues to be displayed at the National Museum \, New Delhi as Dancing Girl.
\nFrom Indus-era bronzes\, t o Bollywood films depicting Mughal courtesans\, to ill-fated efforts to o utlaw urban “dance bars”\, the figure of the danseuse is ever present ove r four millennia of Indian history. Revered as a goddess\, reviled as a s eductress\, empowered as creative actors\, disenfranchised as social pari ahs\, the Indian female dancer reflects her nation’s preoccupations with sexuality and gendered expectations. This presentation offers a critical and creative rethinking of female dancers in Indian art as more than pass ive receptacles of male desire or predictable ciphers of femininity. How might we deploy a rich corpus of sculptures\, paintings\, photographs\, a nd films to rethink the Indian dancer as savvy politician\, prolific litt erateur\, or radical activist? Nearly one hundred years after the Indus b ronze was found by male colonialists\, it is time to reconsider both her infantilizing moniker of “dancing girl” and the predictable destinies to which she and others Indian dancers have been doomed.
\nBio
\nMrinalini Rajagopalan is Associate Professor and Chair\ , Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pitt sburgh. She is an architectural and urban historian of modern and contemp orary India. She is currently working on a book titled Marks She Made : The Art and Architecture of Begum Samru\, 1803-1836. Her book Building Histories: The Archival and Affective Lives of Five Monuments in Modern Delhi (University of Chicago Press\, 2016) won the 2018 Annu al Alice Davis Hitchcock Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians for the most distinguished book in the field.
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