Placeholder text
Performing Arts and Gender in Postcolonial Western Uganda
0 - Default Title
Description
Drawing on archival research and extensive fieldwork in the regions of Bunyoro and Tooro, Linda Cimardi examines the connection between traditional performing arts and gender in western Uganda. The book focuses on runyege, the main genre of the Banyoro and Batooro people, exploring its different components of singing, instrument playing, dancing, and acting and identifying their complex relationships to gender models and expressions. Today mainly performed at Ugandan school festivals and by semiprofessional ensembles, repertoires like runyege adhere to stage conventions that have developed over several decades. Some of these conventions are powerful devices allowing the actors involved (performers, teachers, students, adjudicators, and audiences) to collectively shape an image of local culture grounded in a gender binary that is perceived as traditional. At the same time, stage conventions are exploited by some performers to negotiate their gender identities and expressions in unconventional ways, thus challenging hegemonic gender models. Moving between analysis of historical recordings, oral accounts, and present-day fieldwork data and experiences, the book engages in a comprehensive analysis of the postcolonial entanglement of arts and gender.
Audio and video recordings presented in the book can be accessed on the book's companion website, http://hdl.handle.net/1802/37373.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
302
Release Date:
2025-08-19
Publication Date:
2025-08-19
Publisher:
University of Rochester Press
Languages:
Original:
English
ISBN10:
1648250726
ISBN13:
9781648250729
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
Weight:
441 g
Height:
152 cm
Width:
229 cm
Thickness:
16 cm
Currently sold out