Dance and music move in concert for joint faculty member’s research

Rumya Putcha is an associate professor of music and women’s studies in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. (Photo by Chamberlain Smith/UGA)

Entering her sixth year at the University of Georgia as associate professor of music and women’s studies in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Rumya Putcha has a lot to be excited about.

From new opportunities in writing and research to the continued success of her first book, opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration between her shared roles in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and the Institute for Women’s Studies continue to exemplify the message of her work.

Most recently, Putcha has been named an associate editor for the cultural anthropology section of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association.

“I am really enjoying learning more about the process of editing and peer-review,” she said.

Already a prolific writer, Putcha has penned articles for Feminist Review, The Journal of South Asian Popular Culture, Dance Research Journal and several others. Her first book, “The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India” (Duke University Press, 2023) was long-listed for the 2023 Karwaan Book Award in India and is currently a finalist for the de la Torre Bueno First Book Prize, awarded by the Dance Studies Association. Putcha presented on “The Dancer’s Voice” at the Department of Music at Columbia University in New York City on Sept. 27, 2023, and at King’s College London on June 12, 2024.

“What is unique about Putcha’s book is that it centers the desires and agency of the women dancers rather than the cultural gatekeepers or the institutions that seek to control the art form,” said Tapoja Chaudhuri of the International Examiner. “Her book also follows the figure of the dancer beyond the formal classical dance arenas to give us a more comprehensive idea of who the dancer becomes for multiple audiences.”

Putcha’s second book project, “Namaste Nation: Yoga, Orientalism, and Imaginations of India,” extends her work on transnational performance cultures to critical analyses of capitalist fitness industries. Putcha, the 2023 recipient of the Willson Center for Arts and Humanities Ludwig-Maximillians University Fellowship, spent part of this summer conducting research for her book in Munich. She continued her research in London at the Wellcome Collection and Institute with the support of the Sarah Moss Fellowship.

“I engage anti-colonial thought to bring together two worlds — music and gender studies. By applying gender analysis to the study of music and by integrating musical analysis in the study of gender, my work highlights the insights that can emerge only from stepping outside intellectual silos,” Putcha said.

“My research and teaching convey an awareness that music is never separable from the social and cultural practices that it activates nor is gender separable from the aesthetics, creativity or performances that it fuels. Through my contributions as a dancer, a vocalist and a faculty member with two distinct, but overlapping, sets of academic expertise at UGA, I have cultivated a generative analytical frame to better understand both what music and gender are and what they mean in our societies.”

In addition to her course load, another way Putcha’s work bridges the School of Music with the Institute of Women’s Studies is by chairing doctoral committees for students using their own research to explore these two areas of study.

“Assisting with their research is a wonderful example of the best parts of my job,” she said.

This November, Putcha will present selections from films relevant to “The Dancer’s Voice” along with a discussion moderated by Jared Holton, assistant professor of ethnomusicology and in partnership with the UGA Department of Dance and the Willson Center for Arts and Humanities. Details will be available on both area’s websites at music.uga.edu and iws.uga.edu.