Rumya Putcha – Yoga and Imaginations of India
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS University of London
- Room
- Main Building, 201
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies is thrilled to host Ass. Prof. Rumya S. Putcha of Institute for Women’s Studies and Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia (USA), to present on the topic of “Yoga and Imaginations of India”.
This presentation examines how colonial agents in India utilized new and emerging technologies to cultivate somatic forms of orientalism. Highlighting the circulation of drawings, photographs, and other mobile objects that operated as material knowledge, Prof. Putcha traces how image-based technologies, which preceded sound recording, encouraged sensory, bodily, and emotional attachments to India.
They gave rise, she argues, to a somatic orientalism that produced and continues to support a particular racial imagination. Through a combination of critical transnational feminist ethnographic and archival tools, Prof. Putcha locates the emergence of such imaginations in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, focusing on two figures in the colonial archive: the jogi and the courtezan.
Ultimately, she will challenge the prevailing imaginations of India, arguing that they have become so deeply ingrained that dislodging or replacing them is difficult without understanding how they were originally formed.
Speaker
Rumya S. Putcha is an associate professor in the Institute for Women’s Studies as well as in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia (USA). Her research interests center on colonial and anti-colonial thought, particularly around constructs of citizenship, the body, and the law.
Her first book, The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Duke University Press, 2023), develops a transnational feminist approach to Indian performance cultures. Her second book project, “Namaste Nation: Yoga, Orientalism, and Imaginations of India,” extends her work on transnational performance cultures to critical analyses of health and wellness industries.
