Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The presence of the South Asian diasporic population in the U.S. is impossible to ignore, especially in California, which boasts the highest number of South Asian diasporic residents nationwide and infuse the community with a unique syncretic cultural influence. In terms of the arts, the Bay Area boasts a number of theatre groups run by South Asians of Indian descent, such as Naatak, Enad, and Bay Bahurupi, that have presented productions for a community audience since the mid to late nineties. In fall 2005, however, two India-centered plays made appearances on local university and professional stages presenting stories with similar themes but remarkably different critical orientations towards their materials. The University of California at Berkeley presented the first two Indian plays on its campus in 91 years, including "Harvest," a contemporary Indo-Anglian play by Manjula Padmanabhan and directed by Sudipto Chatterjee while Tanya Schaffer’s "Baby Taj," penned by a white female from the U.S., graced the stage of Theatre Works in Palo Alto, CA.

"Baby Taj" and "Harvest" deal with the traffic of intercultural exchanges as mediated through women’s bodies, in the U.S. and India. Childbearing is the obsession in "Baby Taj" while the same topic emerges at the climax of "Harvest." Cultural beliefs clash as Western materialism and sexual/cultural morals are conflated with the politics of the Indian family home in each piece. As female bodies and the traffic of sexuality (heterosexual and queer) serve as the literal sites of exchange for imagined communications between nations, what India becomes legible for its audience? Unlike the plays presented by local amateur theatre troupes, these plays were intended for a larger and presumably non-Indian audience. This positioning arguably set up India as an exotic locale to visit in the space of the theatre, rather than as a setting that implied community or mutual understanding. “Indianness” is positioned as an exotic and familiar category differently by various characters of U.S. and Indian descent in both plays and their identification with this “essence” permits them to cross borders or lament their confinement. This variety of perspectives speaks to the possibility of transnational mobilization that enables cross-cultural exchanges but this locomotion is not always innocuous in nature and seems consistently unbalanced in its power relations.

Through analyzing the text and staging of both plays, I interrogate ideas of self-actualization as expressed through female bodies and desires, activate queerness as a site of inquiry in both pieces, and consider how discourses of globalization and postcoloniality are expressed through the stated and implicit interests of each production as they are presented for professional and university theatre audiences. How does the emphasis on female desire and queerness in these plays trouble the India each play is trying to depict through its narrative? By tracing the exotic trip back home to the U.S. through the path of women’s bodies, I illuminate the way these plays reveal the extent to which India still functions as a commodity in the U.S. imagination yet cannot avoid being troubled by the presence of a local South Asian diasporic population that stretches the logic of its popular representation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I explore the implications of a nonviolent feminist perspective on staging scenes of physical violence against women in contemporary plays. Analyzing Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play "The Love of the Nightingale," I suggest that a nonviolent perspective re-frames and interrupts dominant paradigms which assume violence to be natural, effective, glamorous, and cathartic.

Publication Type: Roundtable
Abstract: This investigation reports on one dimension in an ongoing evaluation of the Anchorage Wellness Court (AWC), a drug treatment court for offenders charged with an alcohol related offense, most often driving under the influence. Graduates of the AWC who had been at risk for varying lengths of time from six months to 2 years were contacted and measures of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1995; DiClemente, Carbonari, Montgomery and Hughes, 1994) and stages of change (Prochaska, DiClemente, and Norcross, 1992) were collected. Additionally, the graduates provided narrative reports on their treatment in the AWC and experiences since graduation, including personal accounts of their recovery and ongoing desistance from alcohol. This preliminary analysis focuses on simple pre-post comparisons of the measures of change and self-efficacy and explores their relationship to standard measures of recidivism and relapse and the ultimate success or failure of the client. The self-narratives are analyzed for indicators of a redemption script (Maruna, 2000) constructed by the AWC graduates to make sense of their past lives and present self.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: (to be uploaded)

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Canadian longitudinal time-use findings between 1986 and 1998 demonstrate gender convergence in paid and domestic work in all employed stages of the life-cycle and polarization in time-use across stages in the life-cycle. Analysis of variance techniques demonstrate that patterns of time-use have become less gendered, though more varied among stages in the life-cycle. Employed parents of children under the age of five have taken on the highest combined loads of paid and un-paid work. Time-use strategies and the pattern of activity trade-offs indicate that time in personal care time has been traded-off for increased time in competing core categories of time-use. Findings demonstrate the renegotiation of family life that has occurred with increased female labour force participation. Theoretical implications with regard to dependent labour theory and the double-burden of paid and un-paid work are discussed and policies enabling flexible work-family arrangements are proposed.