Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance

**Learn more at [www.luminosoa.org](http://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/10.1525/luminos.72/).** *Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance* centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don *stri-vesam* (woman's guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance circumscribed to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic Brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. However, the power of the Brahmin male body in *stri-vesam* is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian dance form. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries-village to urban, Brahmin to non-Brahmin, hegemonic to non-normative-to explore the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance.