Kristen Rudisill

 Professor
Department of Popular Culture

245 Shatzel Hall | 419-372-2444 | rudisik@bgsu.edu

• Popular culture in South Asia
• Performing arts in South Asia
• Tamil language and literature
• Television and film in India
• Globalization, transnationalism, and diasport communities
• Hinduism and the Religions of South Asia
• Government and Politics in South Asia

• PhD- University of Texas, Austin
  
• MA- University of Chicago, Divinity School
  
• BA- Bryn Mawr College
• Bowling Green State University- MBA, Accounting Specialization
  

My new book project is tentatively titled The Rise of Gaana: Dance Competitions, Cinema, and Global Tamil Identity. I consider the way Tamil identity has been constructed using popular Indian film dance. I used a Fulbright research fellowship to work with Tamil-language reality television dance competitions in India, then studied Tamil dance competitions in London and Toronto. In 2023, I will go to Sri Lanka on an AISLS fellowship to bring this research full circle.

I plan to publish more translations of Cho Ramasamy’s plays and two chapters in edited volumes. “Who Wants to be the Next Prabhudeva? Viewing Tamil Identity through a Reality Television Dance Competition” for Performance Studies from the Global South, edited by Arnab Banerjee and Sharvari Shastry and “Performing Terrorism: India’s Indirect 9/11 Casualties in Bombay Chanakya’s Tamil Play, Truths that Change Colour.” In Global Perspectives on 9/11 and Terrorism Discourses, edited by Khani Begum.

Books:

• Honeymoon Couples and Jurassic Babies: Identity and Play in Chennai’s Post-Independence Sabha Theater. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022.
  

Articles:

• “The Business of Kollywood Dance in Chennai, India.” In Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia: Performers and Craftspeople. Edited by Anna Morcom and Neelam Raina. Routledge, Forthcoming, 2022.
•  “Japanese Dancers, Bollywood Dance: Finding Authenticity at Tokyo’s Namaste India Festival” for special issue of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal called “Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method” edited by Emily Wilcox and Soo Ryon Yoon. Volume 23, Issue 4, Forthcoming December 2022.
• “Cho Ramasamy’s Cattiram Connatillai (The Shastras Don’t Say So).” Part I with Introduction. Ecumenica: Journal of Religion and Performance. Volume 15, No. 1, Spring 2022: 1-35; Part II with Introduction. Ecumenica: Journal of Religion and Performance. Volume 15, No. 2, 2022: 113-144.
• “Subversion and Reinforcement of Gender Norms in the Tamil Reality Dance Competition Show Maanada Mayilada” in Indian Theatre Journal, Volume 6, Number 1, special issue “Reality Television in South Asia: Performance, Negotiation, Imagination.” Edited by Kristen Rudisill and Amanda Weidman. August, 2022: 59-75.
• “Expanding Diasporic Identity through the Transnational Labor of Bollywood Dance in London.” In Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea. Robert Ji-Song Ku, Monika Mehta, and Sharon Heijin Lee, editors. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2019, pp. 177-194.
  
•  “Full-blooded Desi Romance: Contemporary English-Language Romance Novels in India.” Journal of Popular Culture. (Volume 51, Issue 3, June 2018): 754-775.
  
•  “Evolution of the Mahalakshmi Ladies Drama Group 1989-2015.” In Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies, special issue on Women in Indian Theatre (Volume XVI, Number 2, July 2016): 134-156.
•  “Pritham Chakravarthy: Performing Aravani Life Stories.” In Asian Theatre Journal special issue on Women in Asian Theatre (Volume 32, Number 2, Fall 2015): 535-554.
• “My School Rocks! Dancing Disney’s High School Musical in India.” Studies in Musical Theatre (Volume 3.3, December 2009): 253-272.

• American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies Fellowship
• New Books Roundtable participant at the South Asia Conference in Madison, WI
• Co-Edited special issue of the Indian Theatre Journal titled “Reality Television in South Asia: Performance, Negotiation, Imagination”
• Served as VP of Conference Planning for the Association for Asian Performance