There are only two castes : men and women : negotiating gender as a female healer in South Asian Islam

In this essay, I examine how Amma perceives and negotiates this seemingly unorthodox position for "woman" in a pluralistic Muslim/Hindu society in which the public domain continues to be dominated by the male voice. Does she draw gender boundaries for the Muslim woman to include a woman such as herself, or does she see herself as unique, operating outside the female domain? I have listened carefully to Amma's healing rhetoric, personal narrative performances, and conversations for indications that she embraced and gave expression to an alternative model for the construction of female potentiality, a model her own position of authority would strengthen. I found myself hoping that she would view her position as one fulfilling the potential of her gender, not as an exception to it. Yet what I heard Amma most clearly articulate was a strong assertion of gender boundaries, and at the same time that her unique healing role is positioned outside the boundaries of her own gender.// Quotation marks removed from title to ensure alphabetical order

"Who am I . . . what significance do I have?" : Shifting rituals, receding narratives, and potential change of the goddess' identity in Gangamma traditions of south India

Abstract These narrative and ritual changes raise questions about what each individually creates, their relationship, and what is lost or gained in the changes I have observed. What is created with the addition of Sanskritic rituals to temple service (traditionally offered to puranic deities4 rather than gramadevatas ["village deities"] such as Gangamma), when middle-class aesthetics haveatepick impacted architectural temple changes, and when Gangamma's narratives recede from the public imagination? How is the goddess' identity potentially changing with these narrative and ritual shifts? These questions bring a performative lens to older questions of the relationships between ritual and narrative, which often prioritize one over the other.5 Ethnographic and performance analyses of Gangamma ritual and narrative traditions show the finely tuned ways in which they are both independent and codependent and the ways in which they both reflect and create--and have the potential to change--the identity of the goddess.Issue title: Transmissions and Transitions in Indian Oral Traditions

Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India

In Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India , Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes six representative Indian folklore genres from a single regional repertoire to show the influence of their intertextual relations on the composition and interpretation of artistic performance. Placing special emphasis on women’s rituals, she looks at the relationship between the framework and organization of indigenous genres and the reception of folklore performance. The regional repertoire under examination presents a strikingly female-centered world. Female performers and characters are active, articulate, and frequently challenge or defy expectations of gender. Men also confound traditional gender roles. Flueckiger includes the translations of two full performance texts of narratives sung by female and male storytellers respectively

Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India

In Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes six representative Indian folklore genres from a single regional repertoire to show the influence of their intertextual relations on the composition and interpretation of artistic performance. Placing special emphasis on women’s rituals, she looks at the relationship between the framework and organization of indigenous genres and the reception of folklore performance. The regional repertoire under examination presents a strikingly female-centered world. Female performers and characters are active, articulate, and frequently challenge or defy expectations of gender. Men also confound traditional gender roles. Flueckiger includes the translations of two full performance texts of narratives sung by female and male storytellers respectively