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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Strategic Deployments Of "Sisterhood" And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women's Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Strategic Deployments Of "Sisterhood" And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women's Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, And Defecating Men: The Power Of Storytelling In Maithil Women’S Tales, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and …
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers In Maithil Women's Expressive Forms, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into interpretive conversation …
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
'Listen, Rama’S Wife!’: Maithil Women’S Perspectives And Practices In The Festival Of Sāmā-Cakevā, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal …
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Feminist Tigers And Patriarchal Lions: Rhetorical Strategies And Instrument Effects In The Struggle For Definition And Control Over Development In Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
This article offers an analysis of a struggle for control of a women’s development project in Nepal. The story of this struggle is worth telling, for it is rife with the gender politics and neo-colonial context that underscore much of what goes on in contemporary Nepal. In particular, my analysis helps to unravel some of the powerful discourses, threads of interest, and yet unintended effects inevitable under a regime of development aid. The analysis demonstrates that the employment of already available discursive figures of the imperialist feminist and the patriarchal third world man are central to the rhetorical strategies taken …